THE   SEMI-INSANE   AND 
THE   SEMI-RESPONSIBLE 


The  Semi = Insane 
and  the  Semi = Responsible 

(Demifous  et  Demiresponsables) 


BY 


JOSEPH    GRASSET 


Professor  of  Clinical  Medicine  at  the  University  of  Montpellier ;   National  Member 
of  the  French  Academy  of  Medicine,  and  Laureate  of  the  Institute 


Butboriset)  Hmerican  B&ition 

TRANSLATED  BY 

SMITH   ELY  JELLIFFE,  M.D  ,  Ph.D. 

Clinical  Professor   of  Menial  Diseases,    Fordhant    University ,    N.    Y. ;     Visiting 
Neurologist,   City  Hospital,   Neiv   York 


NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

FUNK    AND   WAGNALLS    COMPANY 

1907 


COHYRIGHT    1907    BY 

FUNK  AND  WAGNALLS  COMPANY 

{Frinted  in  the  United  States  0/ America] 

PiiBLis)iEu,  December,  1907 


SAINTA  BAilBARA 


I9f^l 


CONTENTS 


Author's   Preface, xi 

Translator's   Preface, xiii 

Introduction, xxi 

I.  The  Semi-insane  in  Literature  and  on  the  Stage,     3 

Don  Quixote,  3 — ^schylus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides,  6 — 
Shakespeare,  Ibsen,  and  Bjornson,  6-10 — The  Japanese  Thea- 
ter, II — Tennyson  and  Wagner,  12 — Turgenef,  Garchine,  Dos- 
toiewsky,  Tchekkof,  Gorky,  Ldonide  Andreieff,  Moliere,  Ra- 
cine, Balzac,  Flaubert,  Zola,  De  Goncourt,  Huysmans,  Alphonse 
Karr,  Hector  Malot,  Claretie,  Paul  Bourget,  etc.,  13-32 

II.  Refutation   of  the  Doctrines   which   Deny  the 

Existence  of  the  "Demifous,"         .        .        .  33 

I.  The  "  two-block  "  theory,  34 — A,  Explanation  of  the  the- 
ory, 34-36— B.  Refutation,  37 — Human  individuality  is  one  and 
indivisible;  but  the  psychic  organs  are  many  and  complex  and 
can  not  be  partially  changed — The  psychic  centers  should  be 
divided  into  superior  and  inferior.  They  occupy  different  zones 
in  the  cerebral  cortex — Objections  to  this  way  of  looking  at 
the  subject — Distinction  between  mental  and  psychic,  between 
the  insane  and  the  semi-insane,  38-49 

II.  The  "single-block"  theory,  50— A.  Explanation  of  the 
theory,  50—1.  Series  and  continuity  from  the  most  sensible  to 
the  most  insane,  51—2.  Series  and  continuity  from  the  most  re- 
sponsible to  the  most  suggestible  and  most  irresponsible,  57 — 3. 
Series  and  continuity  from  the  lowest  animal  to  man,  from  ab- 
solute determinism  to  free  will  which  does  not  exist,  62 — B. 
The  existence  of  a  great  many  intermediaries  between  two  con- 
ditions, or  two  phenomena,  does  not  prove  the  identity  of  these 
two  conditions  or  of  these  two  phenomena, 66 — The  condition  of 
sickness  is  different  from  the  condition  of  health,  68— Differ- 
ences between  nervous  temperament  and  nervous  diseases,  69 — 

[V] 


CONTENTS 

The  necessity  of  making  a  distinction  between  the  sane  and  the 
insane,  between  the  responsible  and  the  irresponsible,  70 

III.  Clinical  Proof   of   the  Existence  of   the  Semi- 

ixsANE.— Medical  Study, 77 

I.  The  Semi-insane  according  to  Tr^at,  79 — i.  Imbeciles  and 
Feeble-minded,  82— 2.  Satyriasists  and  Nymphomaniacs,  83 — 3. 
Monomaniacs,  84—4.  Erotomaniacs,  87—5.  Jealous  Patients, 
88—6.  Dipsomaniacs,  89 — 7.  Spendthrift  and  Adventurous 
Characters,  90 — 8.  The  Conceited  or  Boastful,  90 — 9.  Evil-doers, 
92 — 10.  Kleptomaniacs,  93 — 11.  Suicides,  94 — 12.  The  Inert,  95 
— 13.  Patients  with  Lucid  Mania,  96 

II.  The  Semi-insane  according  to  Present-day  Clinical  Neu- 
rology, 97 — A.  Syviptoiiis  Observed  in  the  Semi-insane,  98 — 
General  Classification  of  Functions  and  Psychic  Acts,  99 — 1, 
Illusions  and  Hallucinations,  100— 3.  Obsessions,  102 — i.  Pho- 
bias. Morbid  Fears,  104—2.  Ideative  Obsessions,  or  Obses- 
sions properly  so-called,  108 — 3.  Delusions,  no — 4.  Impulsions, 
114 — ■).  Aboulias  and  Paraboulias,  121— 0.  Troubles  of  General 
Sensibility,  123 — i.  Autoscopic  Phenomena,  124—2.  False  Sen- 
sations of  Disease.  Hypochondria,  126—3.  Discontent  and 
Exaggerated  (Euphoria  of  the  Physical  Ego)  Contentment,  127 
— 4.  Disturbances  of  Some  Particular  Cenesthetic  Sensations, 
128—7.  Disturbance  of  Personality  and  of  the  Idea  of  the  Ego, 
129 — I.  Diminution  and  Exaggeration  of  the  Idea  of  the  Ego. 
Egoism  and  Morbid  Timidity,  129 — 2.  Optimism.  Ideas  of 
Grandeur,  130—3.  Ideas  of  Denial  or  Partial  or  Total  Change 
of  the  Ego,  130 — 4.  Ideas  of  Persecution  and  Defense,  131 — 5. 
Disturbances  of  the  Idea  of  Personality,  132 — 8,  Disturbances 
of  the  Social  Psychism,  133 — i.  Disturbances  of  Social  and 
Moral  Ideas,  133 — 2.  Disturbance  of  Religious  Ideas,  135 — 3. 
Gregarious  Disturbances,  137—9.  Disturbances  of  Sexual  and 
Family  Psychism,  144 — i.  Disturbance  of  Psychic  Acts  Rela- 
tive to  Sexual  Life,  145 — a.  Hypo  Disturbances.  Hypophilism, 
Anaphrodisia.  Sexual  Horror,  146 — b.  Para  Disturbances,  147 
— a.  Sexual  Hyperesthesia.  Precocity  and  Morbid  Permanence 
of  the  Sexual  Instincts,  Erotic  Ideas,  147 — ji.  Sexual  Perver- 
sions. Paraphilism,  147 — y.  Sexual  Inversion,  150— 2.  Disturb- 
ances of  Psychic  Acts  Relative  to  Family  Life,  151 — B.  Diseases 
in  which  Seini-insa7iify  may  be  Observed,  152—  Systematic  Classi- 
fication of  Psychopathies,  153 — 1.  Mania.     Systematized  Post- 

Lvi] 


CONTENTS 

maniacal  Delusions,  153—2.  Melancholia,  153—1.  Systematized 
Postmelancholic  Delusions,  153 — 2.  Questioning  Melancholia, 
153 — 3.  Mental  Confusion,  154 — 4.  Progressive  Systematized 
Psychoses,  155 — 5.  Disequilibration.  Superior  Degenerates, 
156 — I.  The  Unbalanced,  157—2.  Originals  and  Eccentrics,  158 
— 6.  Degeneracies,  properly  so-called.  Lesser  Degenerates, 
160 — I.  Simple  Degeneracy,  160 — 2.  P.sychoses  of  Degenerates, 
161 — a.  Reasoning  Systematized  Delusions  or  the  Persecuted- 
Persecutors,  161 — a.  The  Persecuted,  162 — /?.  Ambitious  and  In- 
ventors, 163 — 7.  Litigants,  163 — 6.  Erotic  and  Jealous,  165 — c 
Mystic  and  Political,  165 — b.  Reasoning  Psychosis.  Moral  In- 
sanity. Perverts,  166 — 7,  Inferior  Degenerates.  Monstrosities. 
Imbeciles,  169 — 8.  Epilepsy.  Mental  Condition  of  Epileptics, 
170 — 9.  Hysteria,  171 — i.  Mental  State  in  Hysteria,  173—2. 
Subconscious  Fixt  Ideas  or  Polygonals,  174 — 3.  Dreamy  or 
Polygonal  Hallucinations,  176— 10.  Neurasthenia  and  Psychas- 
thenia,  176— Conclusions,  178 

IV.  Social  Value  of  the  Semi-insane,    ....  180 

I.  Generalities,  181-184 — Difference  between  the  insane  and 
the  semi-insane  from  the  standpoint  of  their  social  value.  The- 
sis to  be  established :  The  semi-insane  may  be  intellectually 
superior. 

II.  Psychic  Defects  in  the  Intellectually  Superior,  184— 1. 
Socrates  and  Pascal,  186 — 2.  Auguste  Comte  and  Saint-Simon, 
192—3.  Contemporary  Russian  Novelists,  195  — i,  Gogol,  195— 
2,  Dostoiewsky,  196—3,  Tolstoy,  197 — 4,  Garchine,  Pomialov- 
sky,  Gorky,  201 — 4.  French  Intellectual  Superiors,  201 — i,  Guy 
de  Maupassant,  201 — 2,  Villemain,  203 — 3,  J.  J.  Rousseau,  204 
— 4,  Gerard  de  Nerval,  207 — 5,  Flaubert,  209— 6,  Baudelaire,  213 
—7,  Alfred  de  Musset,  216—8,  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre,  219— 

9,  Andrd  Gill,  221 — Charles  Bataille,  221— Jean  Duboys,  221 — 

10,  Salomon  de  Caus,  Voltaire,  Moli^re,  Condillac,  Descartes, 
Montesquieu,  Buffon,  Santeuil,  Cr^billon,  Ampere,  D'Alembert, 
Lagrange,  Chateaubriand,  Enfantin,  Villiers  de  I'lsle-Adam, 
Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  le  Sar  Peladan,  Cujas,  Bossuet,  Bourda- 
loue,  Malherbe,  Napoleon,  222—11,  Zola,  the  Goncourts,  224 — 
12,  Arthur  Rimbaud,  Ren^  Ghil,  Mallarm^,  Huysmans,  227—13, 
Balzac,  Diderot,  229—14,  Mmes.  De  Stael,  R^camier,  Du  Def- 
fand,  De  Chaulnes,  De  Lamballe,  Du  Ch&telet,  De  Lespinasse, 
230 — 15,  Victor  Hugo,  Charles  Nodier,  Alexandre  Dumas  yiVj, 

[vii] 


CONTENTS 

231  —  16,  De  Chirac,  Glatigny,  233—').  Foreign  Intellectual  Su- 
periors: I,  Tasso,  234 — 2,  Nietzsche,  235 — 3,  Schopenhauer, 
236—4,  Swift,  237—5,  Hoffman,  23S — 6,  Edgar  Poe,  239 — 7, 
Thomas  de  Quincey,  Lord  Erskine,  William  Wilberforce,  Col- 
eridge, 243—8,  Haller,  Jerome  Cardan,  245— g,  Newton,  246—10, 
Zimmerman,  O'Connell,  Munkaczy,  Watt,  Manzoni,  Oliver 
Cromwell,  247 — 11,  Goethe,  van  Helmont,  Weber,  Fechner, 
Frederic  II.,  Schiller,  Paiesello,  Byron,  Svvedenborg,  Darwin, 
Fries,  248  — C.  Some  Great  Musicians,  250—1,  Schumann,  250 — 
2,  Donizetti,  250— 3,  Chopin,  251 — 4,  Wagner,  251—5,  Mozart, 
252 — 6,  Beethoven,  253 — 7,  Rossini,  254 — 8,  Berlioz,  255 — 7.  Cel- 
ebrated Epileptics  and  Suicides,  256 

III.  Rdsum^  and  Conclusions.  The  Relations  of  Intellectual 
Superiority  to  the  Psychoneurosis,  258 

V.  Rights  and  Duties   of   Society  toward  the  Semi- 
insane,    270 

I.  Harmfulness  of  the  Semi-insane,  273 — 1.  Misdemeanors  0/ 
the  Se/ni-insajie  in  the  Regular  Enjoyment  of  their  Rights  as 
Free  Meft,  2-ji  —  i.  The  Semi-insane  may  Live  in  Freedom,  in 
the  Regular  and  Legal  Enjoyment  of  their  Rights  as  Citizens, 
275—2.  Misdemeanors  which  They  May  Perform  in  this  Role, 
276— rt.  Marriage,  2-]6—b.  Malicious  Deeds,  277 — 2.  Crimes  of 
the  Semi-i?isane.  Semi-insaniiy  and  Criminality,  280 — i.  Rela- 
tions of  the  Criminal  Born  and  of  Moral  Insanity  according  to 
Lombroso,  280—2.  Criticism  of  Lombroso's  Ideas,  284 — 3. 
Semi-insanity  and  Criminality,  288 

II.  Treatment  and  Prophylaxis  of  the  Semi-insane,  291 — 1. 
Treatment,  291 — Duties  of  Society  in  Regard  to  the  Treatment 
of  the  Semi-insane  Poor,  291 — 2.  Prophylaxis,  292 — i.  Possi- 
bility of  Individual  Family  and  Social  Prophylaxis  for  the 
Semi-insane,  292 — 2.  Medical  Supervision  of  Marriage  (Founda- 
tion of  the  Family),  295 — 3.  Medical  Supervision  of  the  Bring- 
ing up  of  the  Child  and  the  Making  of  a  Citizen  (Physical,  In- 
tellectual, and  Moral  Education,:  a.  Physical  Training, 
300— a.  First  Year,  300 — 3.  From  First  to  Seventh  Year,  301 — 
y.  From  Seventh  to  Thirteenth  Year,  302 — '.  From  Thirteenth 
to  Eighteenth  Year,  302 — b.  Intellectual  and  Moral  Training: 
Academic  Education  and  Supervision,  Choice  of  a  Profession, 
Military  Service,  Political  Life.  302 — 4.  A  Few  General  Hygi- 
enic Rules  for  those  with  Predisposition  to  Nervous  Disorders, 

[viiH 


CONTENTS 

306 — a.  Causes   of    Nervous   Diseases,   306 — b.  Genital  Life, 
Professional  and  Social  Life,  307. 

III.  The  Semi-insane  and  the  Law.  Semi-responsibility. 
Limited  or  Attenuated  Responsibility,  309 — L  Medical  Idea  of 
Responsibility:  i.  The  Medical  Idea  of  Responsibility  can 
not  be  Based  on  the  Philosophic  Notion  of  Free-will  or  of 
Determinism,  310 — 2.  It  is  only  on  a  Physiopathological  Basis 
there  can  be  Built  up  an  Idea  of  Medical  Responsibility  which 
all  Physicians  can  and  Ought  to  Accept,  whatever  may  be  their 
Philosophic  or  Religious  Convictions  on  Free-will  and  the  Soul, 
312 — 3.  Responsibility  and  Culpability.  The  Physician  and 
the  Magistrate,  316 — 4.  Medical  Idea  of  Responsibility  accord- 
ing to  Contemporaneons  Authors,  318 — a.  The  Italian  School 
— Lombroso,  Ferri,  Garofalo,  319 — b.  Objections  to  the  French 
School:  Fouillde,  Paulhan,  Tarde.  Ferri's  Reply,  320 — c.  The 
Idea  of  Physiological  Responsibility  without  any  Reference  to 
the  Idea  (whether  Affirmative  or  Negative)  of  Free-will  (Sa- 
leilles),  323 — 5.  The  Responsibility  of  a  Subject  is  Based  upon 
the  Normal  Condition  of  His  Psychic  Neurons,  324—3,  Attenu- 
ated Responsibility: — i.  Difficulties  and  Misunderstandings 
of  the  Question.  Contradictory  Opinions.  Denial  of  Respon- 
sibility, 327 — a.  Humorous  Denials,  328— (5.  Scientific  Negations, 
330 — 2.  Necessity  for  Distinguishing  between  the  Medical 
Question  of  Attenuated  Responsibility  and  the  Social  Question 
of  the  Legal  Attitude  to  be  Adopted  toward  the  Semi-responsi- 
ble, 335 — 3.  The  Medical  Question  of  Attenuated  Responsi- 
bility, 336— «.  Statement  of  the  Doctrine,  336—^.  Reply  to  Ob- 
jections, 339 — c.  Confirmatory  Opinions  of  Various  Authors, 
342 — d.  Conclusions,  349 — 4.  Social  Question  of  the  Legal  Atti- 
tude to  be  Adopted  toward  the  Semi-insane,  350 — a.  Attenuated 
Responsibility  in  Relation  to  the  Laws  as  they  Stand  (Certain 
Legislations  Permit  a  much  Greater  Abridgment  in  Special 
Cases),  351 — b.  Objection  to  the  System  of  Shortened  Punish- 
ment, 355—^.  The  Principles  on  which  Reforms  Ought  to  be 
Based,  360 — d.  Modifications  to  be  Brought  to  Bear  upon 
Punishment,  364 — n.  Diminution  of  Punishment,  364 — /3.  Spe- 
cial Penitentiary  Regime,  365—1?.  Surveillance  and  Treatment 
after  Punishment,  36S — «.  Necessity  of  Legal  Obligation  — 
Medical  Supervision  and  Treatment  after  the  Expiration  of  a 
Sentence  should  be  Incorporated  in  the  Law,  368 — /?.  Special  In- 
stitutions for  Surveillance  and  for  this  Treatment,  371 — 7.  Dura- 


CONTENTS 

tion  and  Limitation  of  this  Medical  Supervision  and  Treatment, 
373— y.  The  Authority  which  shall  Pronounce  upon  Attenuated 
Responsibility,  375— a.  Role  of  the  Physician,  375 — p.  Role  of 
the  Judge,  382 — 7.  The  Necessity  of  Including  the  Semi-insane 
and  the  Idea  of  Attenuated  Responsibility  in  the  Reform  of  the 
Law  of  1838,  387. 

General  Conclusion, 390 

Reply  to  Objections, 390 

Index 399 


[X] 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

TO   THE  AMERICAN   EDITION 

My  dear  Confrere: — I  am  happy  to  learn 
that  you  have  decided  to  present  my  book  on  the 
"  Demi-fous  "  to  the  great  American  public,  and 
that,  to  the  many  criticisms  from  all  sides,  which 
have  been  most  courteous  toward  my  point  of 
view,  there  may  be  added  those  which  will  be 
called  forth  from  readers  of  an  edition  in  the 
English  language. 

The  question  studied  in  this  volume  is  undoubt- 
edly of  a  nature  which  excites  intense  interest  in 
every  land ;  no  legislation  can  refuse  to  consider  it 
or  evade  an  attempt  to  solve  it.  It  is  too  easy  to 
dodge  the  question  by  saying,  ironically  and  mock- 
ingly, that  according  to  my  teachings,  everybody 
is  a  little  crazy,  and  consequently  it  is  hardly  worth 
the  while  to  trouble  oneself  to  make  distinctions. 

It  is  false  and  dangerous  to  say  that  criminals 
are  all  equally  responsible  or  all  equally  irrespon- 
sible. It  is  immoral  and  antiscientific  to  say  that 
society  should  simply  defend  itself  against  crimi- 
nals as  against  mad  dogs — by  suppressing  them. 

Society  knows  to-day  that,  if  it  has  any  rights 
[xi] 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE  TO  AMERICAN  EDITION 

in  connection  with  criminals,  it  has  also  duties 
toward  the  diseased.  And,  further,  in  the  presence 
of  a  misdemeanor  or  a  crime  it  ought  to  put  the 
question.  Should  the  accused  be  punished  or 
should  he  be  treated? 

The  object  of  this  book  is  to  demonstrate  that 
to  this  burning  question  the  magistrate,  assisted 
by  the  physician,  may  make  three  different  replies 
according  to  the  case  in  hand:  (i)  The  accused 
criminal  is  entirely  responsible;  he  has  normal 
psychic  neurons,  therefore  he  ought  only  to  be 
punished  and  put  in  prison.  (2)  The  accused 
criminal  is  entirely  irresponsible ;  his  psychic  neu- 
rons are  wholly  diseased,  therefore  he  ought  only 
to  be  treated  and  placed  in  a  hospital.  (3)  The 
accused  criminal  has  attenuated  responsibility ;  his 
psychic  neurons  are  not  normal,  but  are  partially 
diseased,  therefore  he  ought  to  be  both  punished 
and  treated.  He  should  be  placed  successively  in 
a  prison  and  in  a  hospital. 

This  is  the  thesis  for  the  translation  of  which  I 
thank  you,  as  it  will  now  be  distributed  in  a  great 
country  whose  appreciation  is  so  important  and 
necessary  to  the  definite  success  of  an  idea. 
Appreciatively  and  respectfully  yours, 

D.  J.  Grasset. 

MoNTPELLiER,  June  20,  1907. 

[xii] 


TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE 

The  work  of  Professor  Grasset  on  the  Demi- 
fous  has  seemed  to  me  to  be  particularly  opportune 
at  a  time  when  there  is  so  much  interest  taken  in 
the  subject  of  responsibility  for  criminal  acts,  and 
so  many  ill-considered  statements  are  being  made 
offering  cure-alls  for  the  solution  of  this  more  than 
complex  problem.  I  am  pleased  to  be  able  to 
offer  it  to  the  English-speaking  public,  in  the  hope 
that  it  may  be  of  ser\dce,  not  only  to  medical  read- 
ers, but  to  all  classes,  since  all  are  affected  by  the 
ideas  which  at  present  govern  society  in  its  treat- 
ment of  this  class  of  folk. 

Evolution  is  not  restricted  to  the  material  forms 
of  organic  life.  It  pertains  to  mental  functions  in 
the  individual  and  collectively  as  seen  in  social 
customs  and  usages.  The  functions  of  the  law 
fall  within  the  operations  of  evolution  and  the  de- 
velopments of  the  science  and  art  of  justice  form 
a  fascinating  branch  of  study,  from  the  evolution- 
ary standpoint. 

Century  by  century,  decade  by  decade,  the  law 
in  theory,  as  well  as  in  practise,  becomes  more  and 
more  advanced  and  closer  and  closer  in  contact 

[  xiii  ] 


TRANSLATOR'S    PREFACE 

with  the  teachings  of  science.  By  its  very  nature, 
it  is  a  cumbersome  and  conservative  social  instru- 
ment, and  wisely  so  in  the  main.  In  its  relations 
to  many  medical  problems,  however,  it  is  evident 
that  our  American  jurisprudence  has  not  devel- 
oped as  rapidly  as  the  medical  sciences  with 
which  it  should  stand  in  helpful  relation.  The 
reasons  for  this  are  natural  and  are  not  deeply 
hidden. 

Legal  enactments  are  largely  the  voice  of  the 
people  and  represent,  in  some  measure  at  least,  a 
consensus  of  opinion  on  matters  made  obligatory 
on  the  masses.  The  people  as  a  whole  are  in  need 
of  a  realizing  sense  of  the  inadequacy  that  exists 
in  the  particular  relation  of  the  criminal  law  to 
mental  disorders,  and  it  is  hoped  that  the  present 
volume  may  prove  of  value  in  part  to  bringing 
about  a  better  knowledge  of  conditions  as  they 
exist  for  certain  classes  of  the  mentally  afflicted. 

It  is  certain  that  we  are  not  yet  ready  for  any 

very  radical  departures  from  our  present  modes  of 

legal  enactment  concerning  the  general  relations 

of  responsibility  and  mental  disorder.    The  newer 

shifts  in  the  lights  of  psychiatry  have  so  modified 

many  views  formerly  held  that,  until  the  exact 

bearing  of  the  work  of  Kraepelin,  of  Wernicke,  and 

Ziehen  and  others  can  be  gained,  so  far  as  their 

forensic  significance  is  concerned,  it  were  better 

[xiv] 


TRANSLATOR'S   PREFACE 

to  study  the  ground  carefully  before  going  ahead 
with  foolish  and  premature  law-making. 

Yet  this  work  of  Grasset's  serves  to  bring  to  the 
fore  a  more  definite  knowledge  of  a  large  class  of 
individuals  who  are  not  provided  for  in  the  general 
order  of  things,  and  if  accidentally  they  come  in 
conflict  with  the  conserving  factors  of  society  some 
better  provision  for  their  care  and  treatment  is 
needed  than  we  at  the  present  time  possess. 
Whether  democracy  will  ever  countenance  the 
view  that  would  regard  the  criminal  rather  than 
the  crime,  it  is  difficult  to  say ;  but  it  is  hoped  that 
Grasset's  discussion  of  the  problem  may  prove  a 
factor  in  the  uplift  of  the  method  of  legal  regula- 
tion of  this  large  group  of  the  demi-fous. 

In  the  present  volume  Grasset  makes  extensive 
use  of  a  figure  or  mode  of  explanation  to  which 
he  has  devoted  an  entire  volume,  "  Le  Psychisme 
Inferieur,"  published  in  1906.  In  this  study, 
which  is  largely  medical,  he  develops  the  idea  that 
there  are  two  psychisms,  and,  in  order  to  show  the 
significance  of  each,  he  employs,  as  an  illustration 
and  for  the  sake  of  analysis,  a  case  of  somnam- 
bulism. Lady  Macbeth,  in  Shakespeare's  well- 
known  drama,  speaks  her  celebrated  "  Out, 
damned  spot!"  without  knowing  it  and  without 
wishing  it;  that  is  to  say,  unconsciously  and  auto- 
matically.   She  is  able  to  carry  out  her  long  series 

[XV] 


TRANSLATOR'S   PREFACE 

of  complicated  and  coordinated  movements  by 
reason  of  the  inferior  psychism,  as  Grasset  calls  it. 
Her  superior  psychism  does  not  enter  into  her 
actions. 

There  are  then  two  orders  or  classes  of  psychic 
acts,  and  the  contrast  between  Lady  MacbetJis 
counsel  to  her  husband  while  awake  and  her 
actions  while  somnambulistic  shows  these  two 
classes  very  distinctly.  Grasset,  as  well  as  many 
others,  divides  the  activities  of  the  two  psychisms 
into  those  which  are  conscious  and  voluntary  (pre- 
sided over  by  the  superior  psychism)  and  those 
which  are  automatic  and  unconscious  (under  the 
control  of  the  inferior  psychism).  It  is  to  Janet 
that  the  original  clear  formulation  of  this  hypoth- 
esis is  due,  altho  it  has  been  in  the  air  for  years. 
He  illustrates  his  scheme  by  the  following  dia- 
gram, which  should  be  carefully  studied  in  order 
to  understand  his  reasoning  in  the  present  volume : 

Grasset  takes  care  to  state  that  his  scheme  is 
one  employed  for  pure  convenience.  If  later 
studies  show  it  to  have  defects,  it  can  be  changed. 

At  O  one  finds  the  superior  psychic  center,  the 
seat  of  the  superior  psychism,  formed  of  a  great 
number  of  neurons;  below  is  the  polygon 
A  VTEMK  of  automatic  inferior  centers,  which 
collectively  make  up  the  inferior  psychic  centers, 
the  seat  of  the  inferior  psychism.    On  one  side  are 

[xvi] 


TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE 


Ye   Im  >kk 


O,  superior  psychic  center;  of  conscious  personality,  free-will, 
and  the  responsible  ego. 

AVTEMK,^o\y%on  of  the  automatic  centers  (inferior  psychic 
center  or  of  psychological  automatism). 

A,  auditory  or  hearing  center. 

V,  visual  or  seeing  center. 

Ti  tactile  or  touch  center. 

E,  center  for  writing. 

M,  center  for  speech. 

K,  center  for  general  movements. 


[  xvii 


TRANSLATOR'S   PREFACE 

receiving  centers  for  incoming  sensations — of 
hearing,  A;  of  seeing,  V;  and  of  touch,  T;  on  the 
other  side  the  transmitting  centers  for  outgoing 
impulses — for  general  motion,  K;  for  articulate 
speech,  M;  and  for  writing,  E. 

These  centers,  Ay  V,  Z",  E,  M,  K,  are  all  situa- 
ated  in  the  gray  matter  of  the  cortex  or  ganglia  of 
the  brain  and  are  closely  connected  by  intrapolyg- 
onal  fibers,  AE,  AM,  AK ;  VE,  VM,  VK ;  TE, 
TM,  TK,  which  are  in  association  with  the  out- 
side world  from  the  surface  of  the  body  through 
the  incoming  fibers,  aA,  vV,  tT,  and  the  outgoing 
fibers  to  the  muscles,  Ee,  Mm,  Kk.  They  are, 
moreover,  connected  with  the  superior  center  O 
by  means  of  the  overpolygonal  fibers,  one  set  sen- 
sory, AO,  VO,  TOy  bearing  perceptions  to  the  O 
center;  the  other  set  motor,  OE,  OM,  OK^  bearing 
motor  impulses  outward. 

Voluntary  acts  take  place  within  the  polygon 
whenever  the  AO,  VO,  TO,  KO,  MO,  EO  fibers 
are  intact  and  functionating.  One  then  has  con- 
sciousness of  the  voluntary  acts.  When  the  over- 
polygonal  fibers  are  not  functionating,  a  disaggre- 
gation or  dissociation  takes  place  between  the  O 
and  the  polygon,  and  automatic  acts  take  place 
unknown  to  consciousness. 

This  short  word  of  explanation  seems  advisable, 
altho  this  hypothesis  has  had  a  vogue  for  some 

[  xviii  ] 


TRANSLATOR'S    PREFACE 

time,  as  spoken  of  by  different  names  by  different 
authors. 

In  the  following  pages,  whenever  the  titles  of 
articles  in  French  journals  will  serve  to  assist  the 
reader  in  comprehending  the  text,  these  titles 
have  been  translated  into  English,  but  the  name 
of  the  publication  in  which  they  appear  is  re- 
tained in  the  original  French. 

My  sincere  thanks  are  here  rendered  to  Mrs. 
Smith  Ely  Jelliffe,  who  has  been  of  much  material 
assistance  in  the  translation. 

Smith  Ely  Jelliffe. 

64  West  Fifty-sixth  Street,  New  York. 
September  i,  1907. 


[  ziz 


INTRODUCTION 

General  Idea  and  Plan  of  the  Book.— Social  Importance  of  the 
Question.— Prevalent  Misconceptions  Concerning  the  Semi- 
insane.— Immense  Social  Significance  of  the  Question.— Scope 
of  the  Subject. — Duties  and  Claims  of  Society  toward  the 
Semi-insane. — Social  Defense,  Assistance,  Treatment.— The 
Idea  of  Responsibility  Grows  Less  as  the  Question  of  the  In- 
dividualization of  the  Trouble  is  Evolved. — Medical  Character 
of  the  Question.— Plan  of  the  Book. 

THE  question  of  the  insane  has  never  been 
solved,  altho  it  has  been  before  us  for  a  long 
time.  Without  having  carefully  defined  them, 
society  has  nevertheless  recognized  certain  duties 
and  rights  in  its  treatment  of  these  patients.  The 
law  recognizes  the  existence  of  the  insane.  We 
know  that,  while  protecting  ourselves  against  their 
misdeeds,  we  must  succor  and  care  for  them. 
Magistrates  recognize  the  irresponsibility  of  such 
persons,  and  judges  make  allowances  for  them  in 
their  verdicts.  The  insane  have  their  own  place 
in  the  social  order  of  things,  as  it  exists  to-day. 

But  this  is  by  no  means  true  of  the  "  demifous," 
or  semi-insane.  Yet  they  are  no  less  numerous, 
and  no  less  a  hindrance.  They  exist  to-day  as 
they  have  existed  before.  They  pass  us  every  day 
in  the  street,  where  at  times  they  hinder  and  de- 

[xxi] 


INTRODUCTION 

lay  traffic,  either  by  their  own  acts  or  by  the  atten- 
tion they  arouse  in  others.  Everybody  knows 
such  people,  but  they  have  not  yet  been  given  a 
definite  place  in  the  social  system.  Moreover, 
they  are  as  a  rule  misjudged. 

Some  people  intentionally  treat  them  as  poor 
unfortunate  devils,  or  "  fakers,"  or  fools,  paying  no 
attention  to  anything  they  say  or  do,  and  using 
sarcasm  and  irony,  if  not  blows.  It  is  the  same 
attitude  as  that  of  the  muleteers  and  valets  of  the 
Duke  of  Osuna  toward  Don  Quixote  and  Sancho 
Panza.  Others  regard  all  eccentric  and  slightly 
unbalanced  people  as  irresponsible  patients,  who 
ought  to  be  douched  and  shut  up  in  an  asylum, 
but  never  in  a  prison.  The  first  allow  the  demi- 
fous  no  merit  for  their  good  deeds,  and  the  second 
relieve  them  of  all  responsibility  for  their  misbe- 
haviors.   One  exaggeration  is  as  bad  as  the  other. 

On  the  one  hand,  we  can  not  deny  the  high 
social  merits  of  certain  individuals  in  this  class, 
and  we  must  beware  of  depriving  society  of  all 
unbalanced  geniuses.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
fact  must  be  recognized  that  the  unbalanced  are 
sometimes  harmful  characters,  that  we  should  be 
able  to  keep  out  of  the  way  of  their  misdeeds,  and 
that  they  should  not  be  permitted  an  absurd  im- 
punity, nor  yet  at  the  same  time  be  treated  like 
ordinary  criminals  who  are  entirely  responsible. 

[  xxii  1 


INTRODUCTION 

The  question  of  what  to  do  with  them  has  been 
raised  everywhere.  Nowhere  has  any  one  really 
solved  it.  We  must,  however,  remember  that  the 
question  is  exceedingly  difficult;  and  I  would 
much  rather  undertake  to  set  its  various  forms  be- 
fore you  than  to  offer  any  definite  solution  of  it. 
At  all  events,  we  can  not  fail  to  see  its  great  social 
significance. 

When,  in  1900,  I  was  confronted  for  the  first 
time  ^  with  the  problem  of  the  semi-insane,  I  had  no 
other  object  in  view  than  to  study  and  point  out 
definitely  the  relation  in  which  intellectual  super- 
iority stood  to  nervousness,  to  show  the  existence 
and  the  true  nature  of  this  relation,  to  refute  the 
Lombrosian  theory  of  genius  as  a  neurosis,  and  to 
define  the  position  of  the  abnormal  intellectual 
superioity  in  the  neuropathic  family.  After 
Michel  Corday's*  book  came  out,  I  took  the  ques- 
tion' up  again,  and  showed  what  the  demifous,  or 
the  semi-insane,  were  from  the  scientific  point  of 
view.  I  proved  their  existence  from  the  medical 
standpoint,  indicated  the  service  they  might  be 

*The  Intellectual  Superiority  of  Nervous  People.  A  conference 
held  at  the  Society  Nimoise,  of  the  friends  of  the  University  of 
Montpellier  and  at  the  general  association  of  students  of  Mont- 
pellier.  (January,  1900.)  Lemons  de  clinique  mddicale,  4th  series, 
1903,  p.  683. 

"Michel  Corday :  "  Les  Demifous."     Paris,  Charpentier,  1905. 

'"Demifous  et  Demiresponsables,"  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
February  15,  1906,  p.  887. 

[  xxiii  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

able  to  render  to  Society,  their  social  value,  and 
also  the  harm  they  might  be  capable  of,  as  they 
were  only  semi-responsible  for  the  evil,  as  well  as 
the  good,  they  might  do. 

In  the  mean  time,*  I  have  tried  to  show  what  is 
meant  by  medical  responsibility,  and  in  what  way 
it  is  to  be  distinguished  from  moral  responsibility, 
and  how  in  consequence  it  may  be  regarded  by  all 
physicians,  whatever  their  philosophical  or  religious 
opinion  on  the  question  of  free  will.  I  have  thus 
tried  to  show  that  there  is  the  same  mistake  in 
each  of  the  two  opposed  theories,  that  of  the  two 
groups  and  that  of  the  one  group.  Both  of  these 
deny  the  existence  of  the  semi-insane,  and  admit 
the  existence,  on  the  one  hand,  of  two  separate  and 
opposed  groups,  the  responsible  and  the  irresponsi- 
ble only,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  a  continuous  series, 
passing  from  the  wholly  responsible  to  the  most 
irresponsible  without  any  possible  distinction  or 
classification  into  separate  groups.  I  was  obliged, 
therefore,  to  establish  in  addition  to  the  responsi- 
ble, rational  individual,  and  the  irresponsible  in- 
sane one,  the  scientific  and  legal  right  to  existence 
of  a  third  group,  composed  of  the  semi-insane  who 
were  semi-responsible. 


'  "Le  Probl&me  Physiopathologique  dela  Responsabilite,"  Jour- 
nal de  Psychologie  Normale  et  Pathologique,  1905,  ii.,  p.  97. 
Paris :  F.  Alcan. 

[  xxiv  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

All  these  ideas  will  reappear  in  this  book,  fur- 
ther developed,  and,  above  all,  more  scientifically 
supported  than  it  was  possible  for  them  to  be  in  the 
conferences,  or  in  the  articles  in  the  Revue.  Fur- 
thermore, there  is  an  entirely  new  chapter  in  this 
book  which  contains  the  sum  and  substance  of  the 
entire  problem.  It  deals  with  the  rights  of  society 
and  its  duties  toward  the  semi-insane. 

The  question  of  social  protection  against  nervous 
diseases  is  one  of  great  importance.*  Naturally,  I 
do  not  intend  to  speak  here  of  the  medical  treat- 
ment of  nervous  disorders,  which  is  of  interest 
only  to  physicians. 

But  society  has  a  double  mission  to  perform  for 
the  neurotic.  First,  it  should  make  an  effort  to 
decrease  their  numbers.  This  is  a  prophylaxis 
based  on  an  exact  knowledge  of  causes.*  Further  it 
ought  to  protect  itself  against  neurotic  simpletons 
or  criminals. 

As  for  the  first  subject  it  is  easy  to  show  the 
principles  upon  which  one  can  establish  an  effi- 
cient prophylaxis  against  semi-insanity,  but  on  the 
second  and  more  important  topic,  the  difficulties  are 
very  great,  and  the  problem  is  far  from  being  solved. 

*"  Organization  for  Social  Protection  against  Nervous  Diseases 
— Individual,  Family,  and  Social  Prophylaxis,"  Revue  des  Iddes, 
March,  1906. 

' "  Th^rapeutique  des  Maladies  du  Syst^me  Nerveux,"  "  Encyclo- 
pddie  Scientifique,"  1906,  ii.,  p.  17. 

[  XXV  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

What  should  be  the  attitude  of  society  toward 
pernicious  neuropaths? 

The  fact  that  is  well  established  at  the  present 
time  is  that  the  idea  of  social  defense  admits  not 
only  the  precautions  that  should  be  taken  to 
diminish  the  harmfulness  of  the  neuropathic,  in 
order  to  protect  society  from  their  attacks,  but 
also  includes  the  ideas  of  assistance  and  treatment. 

As  for  the  insane,  that  is  to  say  the  irresponsi- 
ble, the  problem  is  by  no  means  solved,  for  we  (in 
France)  are  living  at  the  present  time  under  the 
regime  of  the  law  of  1838,^  but  it  is  at  least  clearly 
stated.  One  knows  exactly  every  element  in  that 
problem.  The  only  thing  that  remains  to  be  done 
is  to  obtain  practical  legislative  enactments.' 

As  regards  the  semi-insane  the  problem  is  more 
delicate,  and  is  not  yet  solved,  even  in  its  scientific 
principles.  The  part  taken  by  psychological  med- 
icine is  much  more  important,  and  much  more  dif- 
ficult here  than  that  taken  by  it  when  concerned 
with  the  insane. 

One  feels  more  or  less  vaguely  that  the  semi- 
insane  person  should  not  be  treated  like  a  common 
criminal,  but  one  knows  also  that  he  can  not  be 


'  Revue  des  Id^es,  /.  c. 

*  Medico-legal  jurisprudence  in  the  United  States,  so  far  as  the 
problems  of  insanity  are  concerned,  is  even  more  backward  than 
that  in  France.     (Translator's  note.) 

[  xxvi  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

treated  like  an  irresponsible  insane  person,  and 
that  society  is  obliged  to  protect  itself  against  him, 
and  to  assume  control  over  him  when  he  has  com- 
mitted a  crime  or  even  a  misdemeanor. 

The  fundamental  problem  of  all  is  that  of  dimin- 
ished responsibility  which  I  must  work  out  com- 
pletely,^ and  concerning  which  we  find  from  the 
beginning  the  most  contradicting  and  discourag- 
ing assertions  uttered  by  jurists  and  physicians  of 
the  highest  authority.  Nevertheless,  the  fact  is 
there ;  we  do  not  suppress  it  by  denying  it.  There 
are  some  semi-responsible  individuals  who  can  be 
treated  neither  as  irresponsibly  insane  nor  as 
rational  and  responsible  human  beings. 

I  shall  make  an  effort  to  show  that:  (i)  Since  the 
moral  idea  of  responsibility  is  bound  up  in  the 
question  of  free-will,  and  therefore  difficult  to  recon- 
cile with  the  idea  of  semi-responsibility,  the  medi- 
cal idea  on  the  contrary  readily  permits  such  an 
interpretation  and  insists  on  the  idea  of  attenuated 
responsibility.  (2)  When  a  semi-insane  person  has 
become  harmful,  society  has  no  right  to  imprison 
him  as  if  he  were  a  rational  being;  but  it  has  the 
right  to  protect  itself  while  treating  him.  That  is 
to  say,  it  has  the  right  to  treat  him  by  force ;  soci- 
ety ought  not  to  detain  him   in   a  prison,  but  it 

'  "  La  Responsabilit^  Attenude."    Journal  de  Psychologic  Nor- 
male  et  Pathologiquc,  iii.,  1906,  p.  420. 

[  xxvii  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

ought  to  r^/^zV^  him  in  a  special  asylum.  Society 
always  reserves  the  right  of  social  isolation  of 
harmful  characters,  whatever  may  be  their  degree 
of  irresponsibility,  on  the  condition  of  combining 
this  right  with  the  perfectly  reconcilable  duty  of 
helping  and  treating  the  criminal  medically  when 
he  is  ill ;  and  much  more,  then,  has  it  the  right  to 
do  so  when  he  is  suffering  from  such  a  malady. 

That  is  to  say  I  would  combat  equally  the  opin- 
ion of  those  who  wish  only  to  defend  themselves 
against  the  semi-insane  by  debasing  all  social 
measures  which  might  be  taken  to  the  level  of 
those  which  the  Italians  call  their  "  Temebilita," 
and  the  opinion  of  those  who  refuse  society  all 
right  to  defend  itself  against  these  patients,  and 
who  would  like  to  see  them  treated  in  freedom, 
according  to  their  own  taste  and  convenience  as  if 
they  were  cases  of  typhoid  fever  or  of  pneumonia. 

This  grave  idea  of  semi-responsibility  and  of 
diminished  responsibility  with  which  the  best 
minds  of  our  period  are  now  concerned  should  not 
be  considered  as  a  mere  formula  of  cowardice  and 
ignorance,  invented  by  perplexed  minds  who  are 
anxious  not  to  compromise  themselves.  It  is  one 
of  the  happiest  and  most  scientific  manifestations 
of  a  philosophy  of  a  very  high  degree,  which  is  be- 
ing shown  more   and  more  emphatically  in  the 

thoughts  of  contemporaneous  criminologists;    I 

[  xxviii  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

refer  to  what  may  be  called  the  "  individualization 
of  punishment." 

"  There  is  felt  to-day  a  general  movement,"  says 
Saleilles/  "  which  has  for  its  object  the  separation 
of  the  law  from  the  purely  'abstract  formulas 
which,  to  the  popular  mind  at  least,  seem  to  sup- 
port it  in  its  relation  to  life.'  In  primitive  days, 
and  for  a  very  long  time  (until  the  last  centuries), 
penal  law  was  purely  objective.  '  Account  is  kept 
of  nothing  but  the  actual  deed.  The  personality 
of  the  agent  is  a  matter  of  indifference,  or  is  ig- 
nored. It  is  the  harm  which  is  done  which  is  first 
of  all  taken  into  consideration.'  Account  is  kept 
of  the  person  who  is  injured,  and  of  the  damage 
that  has  been  done.  Like  the  father  who  keeps 
before  him,  for  the  punishment  of  the  child,  only 
the  value  of  the  object  which  it  has  broken ;  '  to  the 
result  only  is  importance  attached.'  The  taking 
into  account  of  the  disposition  of  the  subject  was 
begun  when  involuntary  crime  was  foreseen.  A 
Capitularie  of  Charlemagne  'does  not  say  how 
punishment  shall  be  supprest '  in  such  a  case,  but 
that  it  shall  be  diminished." 

On  the  whole,  "  the  primitive  penal  law  was  a 
penal  law  based  exclusively  on  the  idea  of  a  fault. 

'See  Saleilles:  "  L'Individualization  de  la  Peine,  fitude  de 
CriminalitdSociale."  Biblioth^que  des  Sciences  Sociales.  F.  Al- 
can,  1S98. 

[xxix  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

The  idea  of  responsibility  in  the  modern  sense  of 
the  word  was  wholly  foreign  to  it." 

In  the  thirteenth  century  St.  Thomas  admitted 
the  influence  of  the  intention,  or  of  previous  in- 
toxication, on  the  responsibility  of  the  subject. 
But  in  law  the  criminality  of  a  deed  remained  the 
only  basis  of  general  estimation.  Thus,  in  prin- 
ciple, there  was  no  subjective  individualization 
founded  on  the  nature  of  the  agent,  independent 
of  the  consideration  of  the  crime  which  had  been 
performed — everything  is  referred  to  the  material 
quality  of  the  deed ;  and  this  material  quality  of 
the  deed  varies  according  to  the  circumstances  of 
which  the  accessory  elements  are  composed. 

Exceptionally  the  judge  was  permitted  to  indi- 
vidualize the  punishment,  and  would  pronounce  an 
extreme  punishment,  or  an  arbitrary  punishment. 
The  judge  could  diminish  or  increase  the  punish- 
ment ;  but,  on  account  of  the  spirit  of  penal  law 
at  that  period,  he  nearly  always  took  the  objective 
circumstances  of  the  deed  as  his  groundwork  when 
he  showed  any  individuality  in  his  punishment. 

This  arbitrary  faculty  left  to  the  judge  was  not 
a  step  of  progress,  but  a  danger  against  which  the 
whole  eighteenth  century  protested  and  reacted. 
And  the  outcome  was  a  still  more  narrow  and  pre- 
scribed formula  of  the  laws,  starting  always  from 
the  objective  point  of  view. 

[xxx] 


INTRODUCTION 

The  Civil  Code  fixt  the  Hmits  between  which 
the  punishments  might  be  varied,  but  it  remained 
based  on  the  objective  idea  of  crime.  "  The  the- 
ory of  the  Code  of  1810  remained  fundamentally 
the  same  as  that  of  i79i,a  purely  objective  theory, 
looking  on  all  criminals  as  alike  when  confronted 
by  the  same  crime — the  punishment  for  the  same 
crime  ought  to  be  the  same,  because  the  respon- 
sibility was  the  same.  This  was  a  purely  objective 
system  of  responsibility,  judged  by  the  external  evil 
which  had  been  done,  and  not  at  all  by  the  state 
of  mind  of  the  man  who  had  done  it." 

But  during  the  whole  of  the  nineteenth  century 
this  system  has  been  attacked  and  broken  down, 
because  it  struck  "  in  the  face  of  two  irresistible 
forces,"  popular  common  sense  and  science.  Pop- 
ular common  sense,  because  this  tyrannical  penal 
system  put  everybody  on  the  same  footing,  those 
who  were  interesting  and  deserving  of  pity,  and 
those  who  arouse  no  feelings  except  those  of  re- 
pulsion. And  it  came  into  collision  with  science 
because  it  rested  on  a  fiction  contrary  to  all  scien- 
tific ideas,  that  of  an  equal  liberty  for  each  man 
when  confronted  by  the  same  deed. 

The  jury  commenced  to  apply  these  new  ideas ; 
it  saw  that  "apart  even  from  insanity  there  might 
be  degrees  in  liberty,  and  in  consequence  degrees 
of  responsibility.     For  lack  of  ability  to  determine 

[  xxxi  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

what  kind  of  responsibility  it  was,  as  the  law  did 
not  permit  it  to  do  this,  it  simply  and  purely  ac- 
quitted. In  1824  to  some  extent,  and  then  in  1832 
in  a  very  general  manner,  legislators  tried  to  satisfy 
these  tendencies  of  the  juries  by  introducing  the 
system  of  attenuating  circumstances." 

This  was  certainly  progress  in  the  individualiza- 
tion of  punishment,  but  the  attenuating  circum- 
stances were  still  more  often  objective  and  exterior 
to  the  subject,  and  came  rather  from  circumstances 
connected  with  the  deed.  It  was,  nevertheless, 
individualization  just  the  same,  but  "based  on 
and  measured  by  responsibility."  Moreover,  the 
penal  code  contained  the  first  example  of  the  prin- 
ciple "  in  that  which  concerns  minors.  Discretion 
is  considered  an  individual  question  and  not  the 
result  of  a  presumption." 

In  short,  without  continuing  further  along  this 
line  (it  can  all  be  read  in  Saleilles's  book),  one  sees 
that  the  actual  progress  of  the  penal  code  is  "  the 
introduction  during  this  century  of  the  subjective 
point  of  view  in  the  matter  of  punishment."  One 
follows  from  every  side  "  the  legislative  consecra- 
tion to  this  very  idea  of  individualization  founded 
on  the  degree  of  responsibility.  This  is  what  the 
new  science  calls  the  theory  of  partial  or  dimin- 
ished responsibility." 

This  question,  therefore,  of  semi-responsibility 
[  xxxii  1 


INTRODUCTION 

is  neither  false,  artificial,  nor  retrograde.  It  is  a 
question  which  is  more  frequently  raised  every 
day,  and  the  solution  of  which  is  indispensable 
in  order  to  crown  the  work  of  progress  which  was 
begun  in  the  nineteenth  century  for  the  perfecting 
of  our  Code. 

One  can  see  at  the  same  time  that  this  question 
of  diminished  responsibility  is  one  that  is  abso- 
lutely and  exclusively  medical.  All  the  elements 
to  be  considered  exterior  to  the  subject  can  be 
analyzed  and  appreciated  by  the  magistrates.  The 
physician  alone,  on  the  other  hand,  can  limit  and 
define  the  endogenous  elements  to  be  considered, 
those  which  come  from  the  individual  himself. 

In  indicating  this  role  to  the  physician,  I  look 
upon  him,  not  as  an  ordinary  practitioner  charged 
with  relieving  or  curing  diseases,  but  as  a  savant 
endowed  with  a  physio-pathological  knowledge  of 
men,  who  analyzes  his  psychic  functions  as  he 
would  his  motor  or  digestive  functions,  who  is,  so 
to  speak,  the  representative  and  demonstrator  of 
a  Human  Biology.* 

Having  said  so  much,  this,  then,  is  the  plan  fol- 
lowed in  this  book,  in  order  to  reach  those  conclu- 
sions whose  great  social  importance  I  wish  to  indi- 
cate. In  the  first  chapter  I  will  demonstrate  the 
existence   of  the  semi-insane,  and  make  my  first 

*  Revue  Scientifique,  August  4,  1906,  p.  129. 
[  xxxiii  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

picture  of  them  by  showing  them  as  they  appear  in 
literature  and  on  the  stage.  The  number  of  semi- 
insane  heroes  of  romance  and  of  the  drama  is  cer- 
tainly the  first  proof  of  their  abundant  presence 
in  the  society  of  every  country. 

In  the  second  chapter  I  shall  outline  a  scientific 
demonstration  of  the  existence  of  the  semi-insane 
by  refuting  the  two  theories  which  deny  the  semi- 
insane  :  The  two-block  theor>%  which  admits  only 
the  irresponsible  insane  and  the  perfectly  responsi- 
ble sane,  and  the  single-block  theory,  which  throws 
all  men  into  the  same  universal  group  of  the  more 
or  less  responsible. 

The  third  chapter  contains  the  clinical  demon- 
stration of  the  existence  of  the  semi-insane,  and 
their  medical  study.  This  is  the  pivotal  and, 
moreover,  the  classical  part  of  the  book. 

In  the  fourth  chapter  I  shall  show  the  social 
value  of  the  semi-insane  by  quoting  examples  of 
such  of  them  as  have  had  talent,  and  sometimes 
even  genius,  who  in  all  cases  have  been  superior 
men,  and  whose  non-existence  would  have  been  a 
great  loss  to  the  progress  of  humanity.  These 
latter  will  lead  me  to  say  a  word  concerning  the 
relations  of  genius  and  intellectual  superiority  to 
the  neuroses. 

In  the  last  chapter  I  shall  show  first  that  if  cer- 
tain of  the  semi-insane   have  great  social  value, 

[  xxxiv  ] 


INTRODUCTION 

others  are,  on  the  contrary,  pernicious  to  society, 
and  form  a  veritable  source  of  danger,  and  that  in 
consequence  it  should  be  necessary  to  study  the 
attitude  which  one  ought  to  adopt  in  these  cases, 
and  the  duties  and  rights  of  society  in  connection 
with  them.  Then  I  shall  take  up  the  medical  idea 
of  social  responsibility,  and  shall  show  in  what  way 
it  differs  from  moral  responsibility,  how  far  it  is 
independent  of  the  philosophical  or  religious  ideas 
of  each  individual  concerning  free  will.  Then  will 
come  the  study,  properly  so-called,  of  the  great 
question,  which  is  always  under  controversy,  that 
of  diminished  responsibility,  and  I  shall  sum  up, 
in  conclusion,  the  general  principles  of  social  pro- 
phylaxis for  the  semi-insane. 


cxxv  ] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE   AND 
THE   SEMI-RESPONSIBLE 


CHAPTER    I 

The  Semi-Insane  in  Literature  and  on  the  Stage 

Don  Quixote  —  ^schylus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides  —  Shake- 
speare, Ibsen,  and  Bjdrnson — The  Japanese  Theater — Ten- 
nyson and  Wagner  —  Turgenef,  Garchine,  Dostoiewsky, 
Tchekkof,  Gorky,  Leonide  Andreieff,  Moli^re,  Racine,  Bal- 
zac, Flaubert,  Zola,  De  Goncourt,  Huysmans,  Alphonse  Karr, 
Hector  Malot,  Claretie,  Paul  Bourget,  etc. 

THE  celebrated  fetes  in  Spain  for  the  third 
centennial  of  the  appearance  of  "  Don  Quix- 
ote," and  the  representation  at  the  Comedie 
Fran9aise  of  the  comic-heroic  drama  of  Jean 
Richepin/  give  a  certain  actuality  to  the  question 
of  deciding  whether  Cervantes's  hero  was  a  mad- 
man or  a  rational  being. 

One  would  readily  sign  a  commitment  certifi- 
cate to  an  asylum  for  the  ingenuous  hidalgo  if  one 
heard  him  proclaiming: 

"  One  chosen  to  comfort  all  souls  in  affliction, 
To  punish  all  crimes,  dispelling  all  fears, 
To  bring  hope  to  the  desperate,  drying  their  tears, 
Avenging  their  wrongs,  and  leading  the  way 


'Jean  Richepin:  "Don  Quichotte.     Drame  hdroi-comique,  Edi- 
tion de  r Illustration." 

[3] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

As  a  Pilgrim  of  Right  K)  a  happier  day. 

A  pure-hearted  knight  in  whose  far-gazing  eyes 

Burn  the  tires  of  eternity  lit  in  the  skies." 

Nevertheless,  at  another  time  "  he  is  the  wisest 
of  all  minds,"  as  the  master,  Nicholas,  declares. 
He  finds  his  real  name  again  and  his  civil  posi- 
tion ;  he  regrets  the  trouble  he  made  for  his  niece, 
and  comes  back  to  be  the  "  old  uncle  who  has  so 
tenderly  cherished  her,"  and  in  the  midst  of  the 
worst  follies  cries : 

"Who  has  the  right  here,  I  ask  you,  to  punish? 
Who  dares  place  himself  as  a  judge  of  another, 
Comparing  his  crimes  and  condemning  his  brother  ? 
From  the  voice  of  what  altar,  the  power  of  what  tlirone 
May  a  sinful  man  dare  to  condemn  or  condone  ? 
What  heart  is  so  pure  to  be  worthy  this  trust, 
What  justice  is  God-like  enough  to  be  just? 

It  is  certainly  not  in  the  mouth  of  a  madman 
that  Richepin  has  wished  to  put  these  beautiful 
words.  Nevertheless,  it  is  at  the  same  time  that 
Don  Quixote  frees  the  galley-slaves,  makes  his 
charge  on  the  windmills,  and  prepares  the  ointment 
for  Fier  a  Bras  and  utters  the  words: 

"In  terror  and  ecstasy  raised  by  my  prayer 
To  the  presence  of  God,  shall  my  soul  be  laid  bare."  I 

But  soon  he  himself  feels  his  reason  returning.    ' 

"  I  am  no  longer  mad.     I've  awaked  from  my  dream. 
Kniglits  errant,  enchantments,  and  giants  now  seem 
To  be  no  longer  real.     Even  maidens  in  tears 
Disturb  not  the  wisdom  of  soberer  years. 
My  old  name,  Quijada,  I  take,  and  with  this, 
In  preparing  to  die,  I  see  life  as  it  is." 

[4] 


IN   LITERATURE  AND   ON  THE  STAGE 

Here  we  find  him  again  with  as  much  good 
sense  as  Sancho;  we  are  far  from  the  asylum,  and 
the  poet  has  a  will  prepared  which  would  not  be 
disputed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  mental  inca- 
pacity of  its  author. 

In  reality  Don  Quixote  de  la  Mancha,  this 
"  knight  of  mad  illusions,"  who  will  some  day  be 
Wisdom  personified,  is  the  accepted  type  of  the 
semi-insane  folk^  which  I  wish  to  study  in  this 
book,  and  which  swarm  both  in  books  and  on  the 
stage  since  the  creation  of  the  world,  or  at  least 
since  the  birth  of  literature. 

"  Behold  Orestes,"  says  Michel  Corday,  who, 
with  Professor  Lacassagne,  has  created  and  popu- 
larized the  word  "demifous."  Behold  Orestes, 
Ajax,  and  the  Bacchantes.  Shakespeare  excels 
in  the  art  of  representing  the  abnormal,  Othello, 
Hamlet,  and  Macbeth,  and  Moliere  with  the 
Misanthrope,  I'Avare,  and  le  Malade  Imaginaire. 

'  I  speak  of  Don  Quixote  of  Jean  Richepin.  The  hero  of  Cer- 
vantes more  closely  approaches  the  type  of  the  true  madman. 
See,  for  the  psychopathy  of  the  Spanish  Don  Quixote,  Morejon : 
"£tude  M^dico-psychologique  sur  I'Histoire  de  Don  Quichotte." 
Traduction  et  annotations  de  Cuardia  ;  Louveau  :  "  De  la  Manie 
dans  Cervantes,"  Th^se  de  Montpellier,  1S76;  Caban&s:  "Cer- 
vantes, M^decin,  et  Cervantes  et  les  Mddecins,"  Chronique  Mddi- 
cale,  1S95,  p.  173,  et  1905,  p.  70S;  Villechauvaix :  "Cervantes 
Malade  et  M^decin,"  Th^se  de  Paris,  1898.  Cabanas  also  quotes 
a  discourse  of  Batll^s  on  the  psychopathy  of  Don  Quixote,  de- 
livered at  the  Academy  of  Medicine  at  Barcelona,  at  the  time  of 
the  third  centenary  celebrations. 

[5] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Demifous  of  the  same  period  are  the  Joueur, 
le  Menteur,  les  Plaideurs.  Werther  was  attacked 
with  the  obsession  of  suicide.  Actually  see  what 
place  Dostoiewsky,  Gerhart  Hauptmann,  and 
above  all  Ibsen  give  to  semi-insanity. 

In  his  excellent  Grenoble  lectures  Regis  ^  points 
out  clearly  the  very  considerable  space  which  the 
semi-insane  occupy  in  the  dramatic  art  of  all  time, 
since  "  Thespis,  the  very  founder  of  tragedy."  He 
studies  them  more  especially  in  the  Greek  period 
in  the  works  of  i^schylus,  Sophocles,  and  Eurip- 
ides, and  in  the  epoch  of  the  Renaissance  in 
Shakespeare's  plays  and  the  epoch  of  realism  in 
Ibsen's  dramas. 

Orestes  did  not  have  an  acute  mania  as  Gas- 
quet  says,  but  rather,  according  to  Regis,  a  toxic 
delirium  with  terrifying  hallucinations.  The  Bac- 
chantes present  the  emotional  transports  of  num- 
bers, mounting  to  the  point  of  crime.  Ajax  is 
semi-insane  with  crises  of  complete  madness. 
Hercules  in  a  fury  has  a  passing  hallucinatory  de- 
lirium which  resembles  a  dream  in  action  or  a 
somnambulistic  dream,  which  Regis  has  called  a 
dreamy  delirium. 

"  One  of  the  remarkable  achievements  of  Shake- 

*  R^gis  :  "  La  Folic  dans  I'Art  Dramatique."  Paper  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  Twelfth  Congress  of  the  Alienists  and  Neurologists  of 
France  and  of  the  French-speaking  Countries,  at  Grenoble,  1902. 

[6] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  ON  THE  STAGE 

speare  is  that  he  has  created,  along  with  the 
wholly  insane,  such  as  King  Lear,  types  of  people 
who  are  less  afflicted,"  and  has  described  the  demi- 
fous  or  the  semi-insane.  Thus,  Lady  Macbeth  is 
seized  with  a  **  hysterical  obsession  with  noctur- 
nal somnambulism,"  and  "here,"  adds  Regis,  "we 
must  recognize  the  fact  that  Shakespeare  was  far 
in  advance  of  his  time  "  ' ;  Hamlet  is  a  "  young 
man  who  having  in  his  early  youth  had  his  ideals 
and  his  dearest  affections  blasted,  and  who,  while 
simulating  madness  in  order  more  surely  to  be 
able  to  avenge  his  father,  falls  into  an  incurable 
neurasthenia.  Hamlet  is,  in  reality,  a  pessimis- 
tic neuropath  under  the  guise  of  an  apparent 
madman."' 

Ibsen,'  with  less  medical  precision,  has  depicted 
in  his  plays, not  the  wholly  insane,  but  the  "semi- 
insane,  the  abnormal,  the  neuropathic,  the  eccen- 

*  In  the  comedy  "The  Magnetick  Lady"  of  Ben  Jonson,  a 
"dramatic  English  author,  a  contemporary  of  Shakespeare,"  there 
is  a  "  somnambulist  who  while  sleeping  announces  that  he  is  going 
to  reveal  the  most  hidden  things"  (Chronique  MddicaJe,  1902,  p. 

59:^)- 

'See  also  Rdgis :  "  Le  Personnage  d'Hamlet  et  I'lnterpreta- 
tion  de  Mme.  Sarah  Bernhardt,"  Revue  Philomatique  de  Bor- 
deaux, October,  1899. 

*See,  on  Ibsen,  other  than  in  the  paper  by  Regis:  Geyer: 
"fitude  Mddico-psychologique,  sur  le  Theatre  d'Ibsen,"  Th^sede 
Paris,  1902;  Cabanas:  "La  M^decine  et  la  Litt^rature.  La 
Psychiatric  dans  le  Theatre  d'Ibsen,"  Chronique  M^dicale, 
1902,  p.  181 ;  Eyries  :  "  Les  Iddes  M^dicales  dans  le  Th^^tre  Con- 
temporain,"  Th^se  de  Montpellier,  1904,  pp.  15  et  n. 

[7] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

trie,  the  unbalanced,  the  obsessed,  the  impulsive, 
etc."  Cabanes  thus  sums  up  the  diagnostic  for- 
mulas of  Ibsen's  heroes  as  given  by  Geyer: 

Mental  degeneration  with  obsessions:  Brand, 
Gregoire  Werle,  Rebecca  West,  Hedvvige,  Eyolf ; 

Mental  degeneration  with  hysteria:  Nora,  Hilda, 
Ellida  Wangel,  Rita; 

Mental  degeneration  with  intellectual  debility: 
Agnes,  Maria  Rubek,  Mme.  Solness,  Hjalmar 
Ekdal,  Tesman; 

Maniacal  excitement:  Gerd  and  Eynar; 

Melancholia  (doubters) :  Rosmer,  Rubek; 

Melancholia  (Cotard's  syndrome):  Irene; 

Symptomatic  neurasthenia:  Solness,  Oswald; 

Alcoholics:  Oswald,  Laoborg,  Peer  Gynt,  Ul- 
ric  Brondel,  Relling,  Molvig; 

Senile  dementia:  Old  Ekdal; 

Chronic  delusional  insanity  (third  period) :  John- 
Gabriel  Borckmann. 

As  Eyries  has  very  well  said, " '  The  Wild  Duck ' 
is  of  all  the  works  of  the  Norwegian  dramatist  the 
one  which  best  enables  us  to  understand  the  na- 
ture of  his  mind."  Gregoire,  says  Doumic,*  "  has 
a  mind  disturbed  with  mystic  and  fanatical  ideas. 
He  is  attacked  with  a  malady  which  one  of  the 
persons  in  the  play  designates  under  the  name  of 
*an  acute  attack  of  integrity.'     He  always  has  fine 

*Ren^  Doumic:  "  De  Scribe  k  Ibsen."     Cited  by  Eyries. 
[8] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND   ON  THE   STAGE 

speeches  on  his  lips  concerning  the  claim  of  the 
ideal  and  social  rights,  etc.  He  wants  to  see  the 
ideal  triumph.  He  wants  absolute  justice  and  ab- 
solute truth  to  reign  over  all  social  relations." 
Francisque  Sarcey,  *  who  says  "  that  the  success  of 
Ibsen's  plays  had  the  power  to  exasperate  one  to 
the  highest  degree,"  has  thus  defined  Hjalmar's 
house:  "an  old  fool,  the  bear-hunter;  a  crazy  fel- 
low, the  photographer;  the  girl,  a  pleasant  enough 
person,  who  has  no  other  striking  characteristic 
than  her  extraordinary  tenderness  for  the  wild 
duck ;  her  mother,  an  impossible  old  woman,  and, 
in  the  garret,  the  wild  duck  and  the  rabbits,  invis- 
ible and  silent  personages,  one  of  which,  the  wild 
duck,  casts  a  shadow  over  the  whole  play.  This 
collection  of  the  alienated  is  enriched  by  another 
crazy  individual,  Gregoire  Werle,  who  is  more 
touched  than  the  others.  Any  one  would  think 
when  he  listens  to  a  play  of  this  kind  that  he  was 
walking  in  the  gardens  of  Charenton."  There  is 
no  account  taken  whatever  of  symbolism  in  this 
rather  severe  philistine  criticism. 

From  Ibsen  it  is  quite  natural  to  turn  for  com- 
parison to  Bjornson.* 

In  the  preface  of  "Au-dessus  des  Forces  Hu- 

'  Francisque  Sarcey  :  "  Quarante  Ans  de  Th^itre,"  t.  viii.    Cited 
by  Eyrii^s. 
*See  Eyries:  Loc.  di.,Y>-  89. 

[9l 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

maines "  we  find  the  following  note:  "This  play 
was  written  after  the  lessons  on  the  nervous  sys- 
tem by  Charcot,  and  clinical  studies  on  hystero- 
epilepsy,  or  major  hysteria,  by  Dr.  Richer."  And, 
in  fact,  "  for  two  years  Clara  has  been  paralyzed 
on  her  bed.  She  went  for  six  months  without 
sleeping.  For  days  and  even  weeks,  when  Sang 
was  away,  her  limbs  were  contracted  and  it  was  im- 
possible for  her  to  make  a  movement."  According 
to  Tissot,^  besides  the  acute  attacks  she  had  all 
the  symptoms  of  the  most  advanced  neurasthenia ; 
an  incredible  sense  of  smell,  a  feeling  of  pres- 
ences, intuition  of  others'  thoughts,  mad  agonies 
and  disturbances  without  any  cause.  The  pres- 
ence of  her  husband  was  sufficient  to  dispel  these 
attacks.  You  do  not  know,  said  she  to  her  sister 
Hannah,  that  I  can  remain  for  days  at  a  time, 
with  my  arms  and  legs  rigid,  contracted  on  my 
breast — see,  like  this — but  I  do  not  dare  even  to 
do  it  because  it  might  come  back  again;  and  I 
sometimes  stay  this  way  for  entire  days  without 
being  able  to  stretch  out  my  legs.  If  you  knew 
how  horrible  it  was !  Once  he  was  gone  in  the 
mountains!  And  I  stayed  that  way  eight  days. 
And  when  he  came  back  he  was  scarcely  over  the 
threshold  and  I  had  barely  perceived  that  he  was 

*Tissot:  Preface  to  the  translation  of  "Au-dessus  des  Forces 
Humaines," 

[lo] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  ON  THE  STAGE 

there  and  had  seen  me,  that  my  arms  and  limbs 
became  pliable  again.  He  came  toward  me  and 
touched  me,  and  instantly  it  was  all  over.  I  was 
lying  stretched  out  as  I  am  now.  This,  as  Eyries 
concludes,  is  an  excellent  picture  of  hysterical 
contractures. 

At  a  time  when  he  was  suddenly  overcome  by 
premature  death,  Robert  Geyer,  whose  work  on 
Ibsen  I  have  quoted,  was  finishing  the  editing  of 
an  analogous  study  on  the  Japanese  theater.*  In 
the  "No"  (a  kind  of  tragedy)  " Aoi-no-Ouye," 
"  Aoi  is  evidently  a  melancholic  with  marked  per- 
secutory ideas,  and  the  delusion  is  so  strong  on  this 
point  that  it  suppresses  the  personality  of  the  pa- 
tient. Aoi,  in  short,  is  totally  effaced  by  these 
delusional  ideas." 

Shirai  Ghompatchi,  the  hereof  "The  Little  Vio- 
let of  Eddo,"  belongs  much  more  distinctly  to  the 
group  of  the  semi-insane.  "  If  one  abstracted  the 
Japanese  coloring  of  the  various  details,  one  might 
place  him  among  the  moral  fools.  His  ambition, 
his  hypertrophied  egoism,  his  egocentric  character, 
as  the  Germans  say,  his  vagabond  impulses,  and 
lastly  his  thefts  and  his  crimes  stigmatize  him  suf- 
ficiently to  classify  him.  The  legendary  side  is  re- 
duced to  a  minimum  and  the  morbid  type  is  easy 

*  Robert  Geyer:  "La  Psychiatrie  dans  le  Th^Stre  Japonais." 
"Nouvelle  Iconographie  de  la  Salp^tri&re,"  1902,  p.  359. 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

to  observe.  He  takes  a  very  interesting  place 
alongside  of  other  legendary  vagabonds,  Don  Quix- 
ote, Ahasuerus,^  or  Peer  Gynt.^  Together  with 
their  apparently  hysterical  origin  these  ambulatory 
automatic  impulsions  constitute  an  observation 
which  does  not  differ  in  any  respect  from  those  which 
are  brought  together  by  alienists  of  all  countries." 

"'Maud,' the  most  sentimental  and  the  most 
subtly  emotional  song  of  the  great  English  poet 
Tennyson,  depicts  the  homicidal  and  impulsive 
madness  of  a  degenerate,"  who  "  is  also  attacked 
by  the  madness  of  doubt  as  well  as  by  vague  ideas 
of  persecution."  ^ 

Segalen*  has  pointed  out  in  Wagner's  work  the 
frequent  use  of  the  most  subtle  neuroses,  which 
are  described  with  the  most  astonishing  precision. 
Senta  and  Elsa  in  their  prophetic  dreams  are  but 
well-marked  victims  of  hallucinations.  Siegfried 
drinks  of  amnesia  at  the  same  time  that  he  takes 
the  philter  of  forgetfulness.  Under  the  divine  kiss 
of  Wotan  the  fascinator,  hypnosis  puts  the  Val- 
kyrie to  sleep  on  the  burning  rock.  Finally,  the 
astonishing  creation  of  Kundry  is  a  curious  scenic 
adaptation  of  double  personality. 

'The  Wandering  Jew.  *  Drama  of  Ibsen. 

s  Henri  Fauvel :    "  Les  Maladies  Mentales  et  la   Litt^rature." 
Chronique  medicale,  1904,  p.  169. 

*  Segalen  :  "  L'Observation  Mddicale  cliez  les  £crivains  Natural- 
istes,"  Th^se  de  Bordeaux,  1902,  No.  60,  p.  40. 

[12] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  ON  THE  STAGE 

In  his  excellent  study  of  the  Russian  novelists 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  Ossip  Lourie*  has 
shown  that  "  no  literature  offers  so  many  cases  of 
pathology  of  the  will  as  Russian  literature."  He 
quotes  this  phrase  of  the  psychiatrist  Orchansky: 
"  It  is  only  the  smaller  number  of  the  insane  who 
are  in  hospitals  in  Russia.  On  the  other  hand, 
an  enormous  number,  more  than  100,000,  of  such 
mental  invalids  live  at  large."  It  is  the  semi- 
insane  Hving  in  freedom  outside  of  asylums  that 
the  Russian  novelists  study  and  depict. 

Roudine,  the  hero  of  Turgenef's  first  novel,  is  a 
demifou  who  has  been  compared  to  Don  Quixote. 
(Turgenef  has  also  published  a  curious  critical 
study  on  Hamlet  and  Don  Quixote.)  He  is  a 
"  virtuoso  "  of  language,  "  received  and  feted  as  a 
juggler  who  takes  his  melodious  and  empty  im- 
provisations from  one  drawing-room  to  another," 
but  who  has  "  no  solidity  whatever  in  his  ideas  or 
in  his  character;  neither  reason,  feeling,  nor  will." 

Garchine,  who  is  considered  an  affinity  of  Guy 
de  Maupassant,  and  who  has  been  nicknamed  the 
"  painter  of  despair,"  has  chiefly  analyzed  "  suffer- 
ing souls." 

The  great  hero  of  "  Crime  and   Punishment," 

•Ossip  Louri^:  "La  Psycbologie  des  Romanciers  Russe  du 
XIX.  Sifecle,"  Biblioth^que  de  Philosophic  Contemporaine,  1905. 
Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

[13] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Raskolnikoff ,  is  a  "  demifou,"  kind  and  generous, 
but  "  morose,  somber,  proud,  haughty,  and  hypo- 
chrondriacal."  He  asks  himself  "  whether  sickness 
determines  crime  or  whether  the  crime  itself  by 
virtue  of  its  very  nature  is  not  always  accompanied 
by  some  morbid  phenomena?  He  is  persuaded 
that  he  personally  is  under  the  shadow  of  some 
sort  of  moral  disturbances  "  ;  and  he  ends  by  kill- 
ing a  poor  old  woman  and  her  sister  with  the  blow 
of  an  ax.  "  He  puts  all  sorts  of  things  in  his  pocket 
without  looking  at  the  contents — a  purse,  a  jewel- 
case;  then,  not  knowing  what  he  has  stolen,  takes 
no  care  of  it.  He  disappears  from  the  police  sta- 
tion where  he  has  been  summoned  on  account  of  the 
non-payment  of  his  rent ;  he  unconsciously  returns 
to  the  scene  of  his  crime  and  talks  of  nothing  else 
to  everybody."  He  confesses  to  Sonia, "  an  unfor- 
tunate woman  who  prostitutes  herself  to  support 
the  children  of  a  sick  woman,"  throws  himself  on 
the  ground  before  her  and  kisses  her  feet,  goes 
and  confesses  everything  publicly  in  the  hay- 
market,  delivers  himself  to  the  police,  and  starts 
off  to  Siberia  with  Sonia. 

Loygue  *  has  written  certain  medico-legal  obser- 
vations of  Raskolnikoff,  according  to  Dostoiew- 
sky,  under  the  title  "lucid  madness;   homicide," 

'Gaston  Loygue:  "  Un  Homme  de  G^nie,  Th.  M.  Dostyefsky, 
fitude  M^dico-psychologique."  Th&se  de  Lyon,  1904. 

[14] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  ON  THE  STAGE 

and  concludes:  "  Raskolnikoff  is  a  type  of  crimi- 
nal madman,  attacked  with  a  certain  form  of  mad- 
ness which  can  interest  only  the  psychiatrist  and 
the  medico-legal  specialist — insanity  with  con- 
science, known  according  to  Trelat  under  the 
name  of  reasoning  insanity,  distinguished  by 
Morel  as  in  the  list  of  hereditary  insanities,  and 
placed  by  Magnan  with  the  states  of  degeneracy. 
Raskolnikoff  is  not  a  criminal-born.  He  is  not  a 
congenital  moral  fool,  but  a  psychopath,  having 
retained  his  moral  feelings,  an  honest  man,  but  a 
sick  one,  as  Tschisch  says,  and  who  for  that  rea- 
son, altho  he  has  been  given  over  to  crime  by  rea- 
son of  his  sickness,  yet  suffers  from  it  as  an  honest 
man.  We  might  add  that  this  psychopathy  leans 
toward  definite  mental  alienation. 

"  Moreover,  the  entire  work  of  Dostoiewsky  is 
a  mine  of  inexhaustible  riches  for  the  psychiatrist. 
.  .  .  One  might  say  that,  with  the  exception  of 
Shakespeare,  perhaps,  Dostoiewsky  is  the  only  one 
in  his  class.  .  .  .  Professor  Tschisch,  who  has 
made  a  study  of  Dostoiewsky's  psychopathology, 
has  counted  not  less  than  forty  portraits  of  differ 
ent  types  of  sick  people  in  this  author's  work." 

These  types  he  has  observed  or  created  "  by  the 
sole  force  of  his  genius  and  his  intuition."  Fifty 
years  before  the  birth  of  criminal  anthropology  he 
"  described  types  of  criminals  "  (in  "  Memories  of 

[15] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

a  Dead-house  ")  "  in  which  there  is  not  a  charac- 
ter which  has  not  been  verified  by  the  recent  and 
painstaking  researches  of  contemporary  criminol- 
ogists. The 'Treatise  on  Degeneracy  '  of  Morel 
dates  back  to  1857.  But  it  was  in  1866  that  he 
described  his  emotional  insanity,  which  he  else- 
where describes  as  a  product  of  degenerative  con- 
ditions, the  same  year  of  the  publication  of  'Crime 
and  Punishment.'  It  was  not  until  i869-i870that 
the  Societe  medico-psychologique  introduced  a 
psychological  discussion  on  'moral  insanity.' 

"  The  epileptics  are  the  subject  of  attentive,  care- 
ful description  on  the  part  of  Dostoiewsky.  One 
could  select  and  construct  from  his  work  the  most 
recent  and  striking  lessons  in  epilepsy,  which  would 
vie  with  many  of  the  monographs  which  exist  on 
the  subject.  There  are  four  epileptics  in  his 
novels:  Nelly  ('Humilies  et  Offenses'),  Prince 
Muichkine  (' I'ldiot '),  Kiriloff  ('les  Possedes'), 
Smerdiakoff  Cles  Freres  Karamazoff').  .  .  .  Stav- 
roguine,  of  'Possedes,'  is,  says  Bajenow  a  degener- 
ate of  the  first  water. 

"Among  the  innumerable  people  invented  by 
Dostoiewsky  I  do  not  know,  says  E.-M.  de  VogUe, 
a  single  character  which  Charcot  could  not  place 
under  some  heading.  .  .  .  Elizabeth  Kokhlakoff 
of  *  Freres  Karamazoff '  and  Lise  Drosdoff  of 
'  Possedes '  are  hysterical.  .  .  .  Ivan    Karamazoff 

116] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  ON  THE  STAGE 

Cles  Freres  Karamazoff'),  Svidrlgailoff  ('Crime 
and  Punishment ')  have  hallucinations.  Dostoiew- 
sky  has  very  clearly  indicated  the  differential  diag- 
nosis between  the  impulsive  and  the  epileptic." 

The  characters  of  Tchekkof,  who  was  also  a 
doctor  of  medicine,  are  all  "  neurasthenics,  in- 
valids, or  insane,  and  incapable  of  the  slightest 
effort;  their  lives  are  failures."  In  Ward  No.  6 
of  an  insane  asylum,  Gromov,  a  patient  suffering 
from  a  persecutory  mania,  talks  frequently  with 
the  physician.  The  latter  admires  him,  declares 
that  the  madman  is  the  first  man  whom  he  has 
met  who  "  knows  how  to  argue  and  to  converse." 
Gromov  has  replied  in  vain,  "  I  do  not  know  how 
to  argue."  The  physician  replies,  "  On  the  con- 
trary, you  reason  very  well."  The  doctor  ends  by 
giving  him  his  dismissal  papers,  "and  soon  an 
obliging  colleague  shuts  him  up  in  Ward  No.  6," 
where  he  dies. 

Altho  Gorky  has  chiefly  depicted  vagabonds,  one 
nevertheless  meets  the  semi-insane  in  his  works, 
especially  in  Les  Bas-fonds^  which  the  Theatre  de 
I'QEuvre  has  lately  presented.  Was  it  not  Satine 
who  loves,  without  quite  knowing  why,  the  "  in- 
comprehensible "  and  "peculiar"  words  "macro- 
biotic "and  "transcendental,"  and  Nastiawho  cre- 

'  Maxime  Gorky:  "Dans  les  Bas-fonds,"  a  play  in  four  acts. 
Translated  by  E.  Halperlne-Kamynsky. 
a  [17] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ated  and  lives  her  dreams,  and  Natacha,  who 
passes  his  life  in  making  inventions  and  waiting 
vainly  for  the  realization  of  these  creations  of  his 
insane  imagination? 

In  the  works  of  Tolstoy  "  we  find  a  homicidal 
degenerate  in  the 'Kreutzer  Sonata,' and  raving 
alcoholics  in  'The  Dominion  of  Darkness.*"* 

There  are  also  many  semi-insane  in  "  Red 
Laughter"  of  Leonide  Andreieff. 

The  foreigner  is  not  the  only  one  whose  modern 
literature  and  whose  dramas  show  rivalry  with  the 
ancients  in  their  numerous  descriptions  of  the 
semi-insane.  One  can  quote  from  French  litera- 
ture quite  as  many  examples  of  these  abnormal 
beings  which  Lombroso  calls  mattoids. 

As  Debove^  has  very  interestingly  shown, 
Moliere's  malade  imaginaire  is  truly  ill.  He  is  a 
demifou.  "  M.  Argan  is  not  an  imaginary  invalid, 
for  he  really  suffers.  He  is  a  neuropath,  a  neuras- 
thenic like  those  whom  we  see  by  the  thousand 
around  us." 

Following  Folet  of  Lille,  and  Debove,  Gui- 
eysse^  has  taken  up  the  case  of  Argan  and  has 

'  See  also  Egbert  Ogd  :  "Quelques  Considerations  sur  les  Rap- 
ports de  la  Litt^rature  et  de  la  M^decine,"  Th^se  de  Paris,  1904, 
No.  26. 

*  Debove:  "  Le  Malade  Innaginaire  de  Molifere."  Conference 
held  at  the  Sorbonne,  February  17,  1900. 

•Guieysse:  Revue  Bleue,  October  3,  1903. 
[18] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND   ON   THE  STAGE 

also  come  to  the  conclusion  that  he  had  neuras- 
thenia of  the  "  gastro-intestinal  type."  ^ 

Cullerre^  analyzes  the  moral  hypochondria  of 
the  misanthrope  and  shows  that  "the  love  of 
Phedre  could  only  be  considered  in  our  times  as 
mental  aberration  occupying  a  distinct  place  be- 
tween vice  and  madness,"  that  is  to  say,  in  semi- 
insanity. 

The  same  author  points  out  types  of  the  demi- 
fous  in  Balzac,  such  as  "  Baron  Hulot,  a  salacious 
sexual  pervert,  whose  horrible  tendencies  nothing 
can  arrest ;  neither  the  grief  nor  ruin,  the  death  nor 
the  dishonor,  which  has  fallen  upon  his  family; 
Claes,  whom  a  mania  for  invention  has  thrust  into 
the  depths ;  Pons,  the  winner  of  the  first  prize  at 
Rome,  the  artist  who  is  at  first  celebrated,  but 
whose  talent  could  not  prevent  him  from  swamp- 
ing himself  in  the  mania  and  folly  of  the  collector; 
Grandet,  the  miser  whose  avarice  became  an  in- 
sanity. .  .  .  Ursule  Mirouet  is  a  seer  according  to 
the  prescribed  type  of  that  period." 

Lucien  Nass^  has  especially  drawn  attention  to 
this  point  of  view  concerning  M.  de  Mortsauf,  the 

'Chronique  Medicale,  1900,  p.  142,  and  1903,  p.  752. 

'  CuUerre :  "  Les  Fronti^res  de  la  Folic,"  Bibliothfeque  Scien- 
tifique  Contemporaine,  1888,  p.  350. 

•Lucien  Nass:  "  Les  Types  Pathologiques  dans  Balzac";  M. 
de  Mortsauf:  "du  Lys  dans  la  Valine,"  Chronique  Medicale, 
1902,  p.  757. 

[19] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

hero  of  "  Lys  dans  la  Vallee.  "  M.  de  Mortsauf  is 
a  neuropath  in  the  fullest  acceptation  of  the  word. 
He  shows  at  one  and  the  same  time  the  physical 
stigmata  which  characterize  degeneracy,  and  men- 
tal symptoms  which  are  no  less  pathognomonic. 
.  .  .  The  dominant  note  (of  his  character)  is  lack 
of  equilibrium,  of  that  moral  equilibrium  on  which 
right  judgment  depends;  sometimes  he  reasons 
wisely,  and  discusses  weighty  political  or  eco- 
nomic problems;  sometimes,  on  the  other  hand,  he 
maunders  along  like  a  fool ;  he  denies  self-evident 
things  and  the  realities  of  current  observation ;  it 
seems  as  tho  a  distorting  prism  were  placed  be- 
tween his  eyes  and  his  brain.  This  prism  is  his 
egotism,  the  frightful  egotism  of  a  sick  man  who 
sees  everything  in  relation  to  himself,  and  who 
believes  himself  to  be  the  pivot  around  which  the 
whole  external  world  ought  to  revolve.  .  .  .  It  was 
by  reason  of  this  egotism  that  the  Count  de  Mort- 
sauf would  recognize  nobody  as  his  superior  and 
would  admit  no  contradiction  to  his  ridiculous 
theories.  .  .  .  For  any  trifling  reason  his  humor 
would  change  at  a  moment's  notice ;  at  one  time 
he  would  be  gay  and  would  forget  the  persecutions 
which  opprest  him ;  and  then  he  would  be  taci- 
turn, sombre,  with  frowning  brow,  hard  looks,  and 
haughty  coldness.  He  would  brood  in  this  mood 
for  a  time,  and  would  then  burst  forth  in  such  a 

[20] 


IN   LITERATURE  AND  ON  THE  STAGE 

terrible  rage  that  it  would  shake  him  like  a  sudden 
hurricane.  Then  he  would  know  nothing  more ; 
he  would  be  like  a  furious  madman  under  the 
sway  of  an  attack  in  which  the  last  vestiges  of  his 
intelligence  were  swept  away ;  he  would  pour  forth 
a  torrent  of  coarse  abuse  and  filthy  imprecations 
which  would  make  one  forget  his  aristocratic 
birth;  with  tingling  nerves  and  clenched  fists,  he 
would  throw  himself  down  and  break  the  furniture, 
while  his  mouth  would  foam  and  his  eyes  would 
roll— and  suddenly  the  attack  would  be  over;  he 
would  throw  himself  limp  and  inert  on  a  sofa  in  a 
state  of  complete  collapse.  .  .  .  As  a  typical  neu- 
rasthenic and  a  thorough  egotist  the  Count  is  an 
imaginary  invalid  who  leaves  nothing  more  for  M. 
Purgon  to  desire.  .  .  .  He  is  literally  possest  by 
this  supposed  disease.  .  .  .  He  studies  scientific 
books  and  thinks  he  has  all  the  diseases  of  which 
he  reads  the  descriptions.  ..."  I  have  thought 
it  interesting  to  dwell  on  this  accurate  and  exact 
observation  because  it  is  of  great  documentary 
value  on  account  of  the  period  in  which  it  was 
written,  1835,  that  is  to  say  long  before  the  neurol- 
ogists had  determined  upon  "  a  definite  manner  of 
describing  the  nosology  of  hysteria,  neurasthenia, 
and  mental  degeneration."  The  types  of  Bjornson 
previously  quoted  simply  prove  the  wide-spread 

interest  in  Charcot's  works  by  the  laity  even  as  far 

[21] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

away  as  Norway.  Balzac's  types  prove  the  reality 
of  the  existence  of  the  semi-insane  who  forced 
themselves  upon  the  notice  of  the  psychological 
novelist  before  the  time  of  the  regular  medical 
descriptions. 

Flaubert  ^  in  the  creation  of  his  types  of  nervous 
people  has  drawn  both  from  his  direct  personal 
observation  and  from  the  works  of  physicians  of 
his  own  time  with  whom  he  had  more  or  less 
personal  relations:  B.  A.  Morel,  Trelat,  F. 
Voisin.'  There  is  a  very  minute  analysis  of  these 
types  in  De  Lastic's  essay. 

"  La  Legende  de  Saint  Julien  L'Hospitalier"  is 
an  absolutely  complete  work  from  the  psychiatrist's 
point  of  view,  "  and  is  perhaps  the  only  one  in  lit- 
erature for  which  such  a  claim  could  be  made. 
One  finds  there  the  study  of  a  man  with  impulsive 
obsessions,  with  the  etiology,  the  origin  of  the  idea, 
its  development,  its  execution,  and  the  termination 
of  the  disease ;  and  the  whole  thing  is  described  in 
terms  which  'stick '  so  well  to  the  subject,  to  use 
the  favorite  expression  of  the  author,  that  the 
reader  can  himself  feel  every  varying  phase  of  the 

*  De  Lastic:  "  La  Pathologic  Mentale  dans  les  CEuvres  de  Gus- 
tave  Flaubert,"  Thfese  de  Paris,  1906. 

'For  the  description  of  hunger,  Dumas  told  De  Lastic  that 
Flaubert  "had  largely  borrowed  from  the  personal  memories  of 
Dr.  Savigny,  one  of  the  survivors  of  the  shipwrecked  on  the  raft 
of  the  Medusa." 

[2.] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  ON  THE  STAGE 

patient's  mental  states  as  they  follow  one  another." 
The  hero  of  the  temptation  of  Saint  Anthony  "is 
first  a  mystic  degenerate.  He  believes  that  he  is 
suffering  from  religious  persecutions,  but  these 
delusions  manifest  themselves  intermittently,  and 
his  delusions  are  not  systematized,  neither  are  his 
ideas  of  grandeur  very  marked;  he  is  therefore 
autointoxicated,  and  several  of  his  hallucinations 
partake  strongly  of  the  nature  of  those  which  are 
seen  in  the  delusional  states  of  exhaustion  and  in- 
anition. .  .  .  Flaubert  has  left  us,  in  'Salammbo,' 
another  fine  description  of  hallucinations  due  ex- 
clusively to  the  delirium  of  inanition."  In  "A 
Simple  Heart"  he  describes  mental  debility.  In 
"  Sentimental  Education "  one  finds  something 
like  a  special  clinic  where  one  can  see  passing  in 
a  procession  all  those  who  were  afflicted  with  this 
disease  of  the  century,  of  which  the  name  ought 
rather  to  be  disease  of  adaptation;  those  whose 
continuous  circle  of  stigmata  Regis  characterizes 
in  these  words:  "  Their  existence  is  forever  begin- 
ning anew,  and  is,  so  to  speak,  only  a  long  contra- 
diction between  an  apparent  richness  of  resources 
and  a  poverty  of  results." 

And  lastly  Madame  Bovary  is  a  hysterical  degen- 
erate, characterized  by  "  inability  to  adapt  herself 
to  reality."  As  De  Gaultier  has  said  in  his  clever 
analysis  of  Bovaryism,  "  nothing  has  any  effect  on 

[23] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

her  which  is  not  a  figment  of  her  mind,  which  has 
not  been  previously  transposed  and  changed  from 
its  real  state  by  her  imagination.  Let  us  suppose 
that  Madame  Bovary  were  in  reality  transported 
into  the  midst  of  what  she  dreams  about ;  that  in- 
stead of  being  the  daughter  of  her  father,  Rouaut, 
she  were  the  child  of  aristocratic  and  enormously 
wealthy  parents,  .  .  .  and  we  would  find  her  always 
the  same,  feeling  an  aversion  for  the  realities  of 
her  surroundings,  .  .  .  dreamingof  some  quiet  life 
hidden  in  the  depths  of  the  country,  and  of  the 
simple  joys  of  happy  friendship." 

"  La  Renee  in  Zola's  novel  'LaCuree  '  belongs 
to  the  same  family "  as  Madame  Bovary.  "  She 
grows  up  in  a  wealthy  and  distinguished  social  set 
for  which  her  education  has  prepared  her,  and  yet, 
nevertheless,  she  never  succeeds  in  enjoying  reali- 
ties any  more  than  the  others  do."  In  "  La  Bete 
Humaine  "  the  same  novelist  has  attempted  "  the 
trait  of  a  man  with  homicidal  obsessions  who  goes 
so  far  as  to  accomplish  the  deed."  * 

In  addition  to  these  the  greater  number  of  per- 
sonages in  "  The  Natural  and  Social  History  of 
a  Family  under  the  Second  Empire"  are  "  more 
vicious  than  unbalanced." ' 

The  description  in  "  L'Assommoir"  of  an  alco- 

*  De  Lastic :  Loc.  cit. ,  p.  95.  *  Cullerre :  Loc.  cit. ,  p.  357. 

[24] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  ON  THE  STAGE 

holic  delirium  with  hallucinations  is  fairly  accu- 
rate, says  Regis,  altho,  however  great  the  author's 
desire  to  make  it  natural,  it  does  not  escape  being 
a  little  strained  and  unnatural  in  places.^ 

It  is  a  scene  of  the  semi-insanity  of  a  sadic 
crowd  which  Zola  "  has  admirably  described  on 
that  famous  page  of  Germinal,  which  is  full  of 
brutal  realism,  tho  profoundly  accurate  and  heart- 
breakingly  true,  where  he  depicts  the  crowd,  after 
having  killed  the  man  whom  it  hated,  as  profaning 
his  corpse."  ^ 

Nevertheless  the  neuropathological  types  in 
Zola's^  works  have  only  the  value  of  a  careful  doc- 
ument borrowed  from  the  physicians  of  the 
period.  "  It  is  chiefly  the  wise  men  and  physi- 
cians whom  I  have  abused,"  he  himself  writes; 
"  I  have  never  treated  a  scientific  question  or 
approached  a  disease  without  setting  the  whole 
Faculty  by  its  ears." 

De  Goncourt  was  not  ignorant  of  the  fact,  says 
Segalen,^  "  that  the  dramatic  climax  where  Faustin, 
having  jumped  out  of  bed,  stands  in  his  nightshirt 

'See  essay  quoted  by  Segalen  (p.  65),  the  note  on  chronic  alco- 
holism by  Louis  Coupeau,  according  to  Zola. 

'Cabanas  et  L.  Nass;  "  La  N^vrose  Revolutionnaire,"  p.  21. 

'See  Ducamp:  "L'Idde  M^dicale  dans  le  Roman  Naturaliste." 
Address  delivered  at  the  inauguration  of  the  University  of  Mont- 
pellier,  December  5,  1896,  and  the  Chronique  Mddicale,  especially 
No.  20  of  1902. 

*  Segalen  :  Loc.  cit.,  pp.  28,  39. 

[25] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

in  the  middle  of  his  room  in  the  moonlight,  de- 
claiming the  tirade  of  Hermione,"  might  have 
been  called  by  its  natural  name,  somnambulism. 
The  same  author  has  reproduced  under  the  title 
of  General  Paralysis  of  the  Insane  the  observations 
of  Jules  de  Goncourt,  according  to  Edmond  de 
Goncourt:  "  One  of  the  saddest  and  most  striking 
clinical  observations  which  have  ever  been  col- 
lected by  a  mind  trained  to  the  analysis  of  every- 
thing approaching  the  suffering  of  humanity." 
Apropos  of  which  Edmond  de  Goncourt  wrote: 
"  Putting  aside  all  feelings  of  sensibility,  I  have 
thought  that  it  would  be  useful  for  the  history  of 
literature  to  give  this  frightful  study  of  the  agony 
and  the  death  of  a  literary  man."  ^ 

In  "Fa  Dieze,"  by  Alphonse  Karr,  there  is  de- 
picted the  anguish  of  an  individual  with  onomato- 
mania whose  futile  search  for  a  musical  air  which 
has  escaped  his  memory  becomes  an  obsession, 
and  drives  him  to  such  a  despair  that  he  dies 
of  it. 

In  a  scene  of  pure  fantasy,  but  one  that  is  full 
of  accurate  observation,  in  "  Mere,"  Hector  Malot 
describes  the  waiting-room  of  a  celebrated  neurol- 


*  Edmond  de  Goncourt:  "La  Derni^re  Maladie  de  Jules  de 
Goncourt."  Cited  in  Chronique  M^dicale,  1896,  p.  464,  This  ob- 
servation might  as  well  and  perhaps  better  have  been  placed  in 
Chap.  IV. 

[26] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  ON  THE  STAGE 

ogist,  where  his  patients  sit  around  like  "  penguins  " 
awaiting  their  turn.  All  at  once  one  of  them,  "  a 
solemn  individual,"  well-dressed,  with  a  distin- 
guished appearance,  and  the  manner  of  a  diplomat 
or  a  magistrate,  leaves  his  armchair  and  goes  over  to 
Victorien  "  with  a  manner  of  extreme  politeness  in 
which  there  was  mingled  a  certain  embarrassment. 
'Pardon  me,  sir,'  said  he  to  him,  'for  speaking  to 
you  without  having  had  the  honor  of  your  ac- 
quaintance.' Victorien  looked  at  him  inquiringly. 
'Exactly  how  many  buttons  have  you  upon  your 
waistcoat?'  'Really,  sir,  I  have  not  the  slightest; 
idea.'  'Permit  me,  I  pray  you,  to  count  them.' 
'Willingly.'  'One,  two,  three  .  .  .  eight.  You 
have  eight.'  'Thank  you.'  'It  is  I  who  should 
offer  you  my  thanks ;  I  could  not  get  the  number 
exactly — your  scarf  prevented  me;  it  was  cruelly 
painful;  when  the  desire  to  count  anything  takes 
me,  I  simply  have  to  count.  I  am  very  much 
obliged  to  you.'  'It  is  I,  sir,  who  am  happy  to 
have  had  the  chance  to  accommodate  you.' "  * 

In  the  work  of  Claretie  I  cite  Jean  Mornas, 
who  is  one  of  the  "  most  remarkable  specimens  in 
the  literature  of  hypnosis,"  and  "  Moi  et  I'Autre," 
in  which  the  hero  is  a  demifous  with  double  per- 
sonality. .  .  . 

*  See  also  "  Les  Ddtraquds  "  of  Maurice  Mont^gut. 
[27] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

I  could  cite  several  types  of  more  or  less  ac- 
centuated psychoneuroses  in  the  novels  of  Paul 
Bourget;*  Helene  in  '*  Un  Crime  d'Amour"; 
Pierre  and  Olivier  who,  in  "  Une  Idylle  Tragique," 
have  the  same  obsession  and  undergo  a  regular 
attack  of  communicated  insanity;  Armand  in 
"  Physiologie  de  I'Amour  Moderne,"  who  from  his 
youth  has  always  had  a  feeling  of  weariness  and 
disgust,  even  before  having  lived  his  life  which 
caused  him  to  feel  bored  by  the  very  pleasures 
which  he  desired,  and  who  believes  that  he  will 
never  have  the  power  of  feeling,  and  suffers  hor- 
ribly from  this  imaginary  anesthesia;  the  Ameri- 
can in  "  Deux  Manages  (Voyageuses) "  who  with 
his  neurasthenia  pays  "  the  penalty  of  a  life  of  hard 
work  which  would  have  killed  a  European  in  a  few 
months";  and  in  the  same  collection  "  Odile," 
which  is  the  dramatic  history  of  a  hereditary  sui- 
cide with  an  admirable  description  of  the  tempta- 
tion of  death  and  the  fright  which  it  causes  to 
these  unfortunate  nervous  people;  and  finally 
Julie  in  "I'fitape,"  whose  semi-insanity  is  charac- 
terized by  a  disordered  sensibility. 

Paul  Bourget  knew  the  semi-insane  so  well  that 
he  pitied  them  more  than  the  insane :  "  For  an 
insane  man,  the  worst  of  all  misfortunes  is  not  to 

'  See  my  conference  on  "  L'ld^e  M^dicale  dans  les  Romans  de 
Paul  Bourget,"  January,  1904, 

[28] 


IN   LITERATURE  AND   ON  THE    STAGE 

be  wholly  insane,  and  for  a  lover  to  believe  in  his 
love." ' 

In  concluding  this  rather  long  and  very  incom- 
plete enumeration  I  will  quote  from  the  stage  of 
to-day^  the  drama  of  Bruyerre,  "En  Paix,"  which 
propounds  this  distressing  problem :  "  Do  they 
not  sometimes  shut  up  perfectly  sane  people  in 
insane  aslyums?"  and  above  all  "I'Enquete"  of 
Professor  Roger  (G.  Henriot),  "  the  most  perfect 
example  of  a  play  constructed  on  a  medical  obser- 
vation without  any  technical  digressions,  without 
any  side  issues,  and  without  romantic  padding. 
It  deals  with  a  case  of  hidden  epilepsy  in  which  a 
sudden  terrible  attack  comes  on  with  unconscious- 
ness and  without  leaving  the  slightest  trace  in  the 
memory  of  the  subject.  .  .  ." 

What  does  this  chapter  prove?  Nothing  very 
much  from  the  scientific  point  of  view. 

We  must  not,  however,  refuse  to  place  any 
value  upon  this  literary  evidence.  That  would  be 
as  unjust  as  to  exaggerate  its  value. 

It  is  false  to  try  to  make  a  chapter  in  biology 
out  of  literary  material,  and  consequently  one  can 
not  look  for  scientific  proof  in  a  literary  work.  The 
time  is  past  when  "  the  de  Goncourts  invited  the 

'Paul  Bourget:   "Physiologic  de  rAmour  Moderne,"  Ixxvi.,  p. 
522. 
*See  Eyriis :  Loc.  cit.,  pp.  211,  220. 

[29] 


THE  SE^n-INSANE 

public  who  were  anxious  for  information  to  attend 
their  clinics,"  or  "  Zola  naively  considered  himself 
a  worker  on  the  same  lines  as  Claude  Bernard," 
or  Daudet  testified  in  court  with  an  "amusing 
professional  gravity  ...  in  the  tone  of  a  medico- 
legal expert  pronouncing  upon  the  mental  condi- 
tion of  the  accused,"  not  doubting  in  the  slightest 
"  but  that  his  testimony  would  be  admitted  as  evi- 
dence, coming  from  a  scientific  man  whose  profes- 
sion was  the  study  of  passional  disturbances  " ;  and 
when  the  novelists  and  dramatists  all  considered 
themselves  as  "  specialists  who  were  proficient,  in 
case  of  need,  to  hold  consultations."  * 

We  must  know,  therefore,  that,  by  the  very  def- 
inition of  literature  and  under  the  penalty  of  not 
being  literary,  literary  men  do  not  do  scientific 
work,  and  consequently  the  public  ought  not  to 
mistake  a  work  of  art  for  a  work  of  science. 
/  It  is,  therefore,  not  a  scientific  proof  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  semi-insane  that  one  must  look  for  in 
the  preceding  pages,  but  a  popular  proof,  the 
evidence  of  unprofessional  observation.  This  has  a 
value  of  its  own,  and  really  forms  the  first  step 
toward  scientific  proof. 

If  literary  men  were  content  to  reproduce,  in 
dramatic  form,  either  in  novels  or  on  the  stage, 

*Lanson:  "La  Litt^rature  et  la  Science,"  "  Hommes  et  Livres," 
"fitudes  Morales  et  Litt^raires,"  1895,  p.  323. 

f3o] 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  ON  THE  STAGE 

scientific  descriptions  borrowed  from  various  phy- 
sicians of  their  times,  that  would  have  no  value 
whatever  from  this  point  of  view. 

But,  in  those  literary  or  dramatic  works  which 
are  the  richest  in  medical  evidence  there  is  always 
a  great  deal  of  the  author's  personal  observation ; 
I  speak  here  only  of  works  having  true  value. 

This  is  chiefly  because  some  medical  evidence 
has  seemed  to  these  authors  to  agree  with  the  facts 
which  they  themselves  have  observed,  that  they 
have  chosen  and  used  it.  If  Bjornson  took  from 
Charcot  and  Richer  their  descriptions  of  major 
hysteria  for  "  Au-dessus  des  Forces  Humaines,"  it 
was  because  he  had  met  and  observed  real  people 
to  whom  these  descriptions  were  marvelously  well 
fitted. 

If  in  the  contemporary  Russian  novel  there  are 
so  many  descriptions  of  the  semi-insane  it  is  be- 
cause, as  we  have  seen  stated  by  Orchansky,  these 
semi-insane  living  in  perfect  freedom  outside  of 
asylums  exist  in  hundreds  of  thousands  in  Russia. 

This  element  of  personal  observation  appears  of 
more  value  and  more  unquestionable  when  one 
finds  descriptions  of  the  semi-insane  in  older  litera- 
ture, as  in  Shakespeare  and  even  in  Dostoiewsky, 
whose  characterizations  came  before  any  of  the 
great  works  of  contemporary  neurology  on  these 
clinical  types. 

[31] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

It  is  therefore  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the 
great  number  of  descriptions  of  the  semi-insane  in 
the  drama  and  in  the  literature  of  all  times  and  of 
all  countries  is  a  step  toward  the  proof  of  their 
existence,  a  step  toward  proof  which  has  no  scien- 
tific precision  such  as  a  neurologist  would  give, 
but  which  has  this  advantage,  that  it  is  supplied  by 
minds  which  one  could  never  suspect  of  seeing 
neurotic  characters  on  every  side. 

This  chapter  must  not  be  considered  in  any 
other  way  than  as  a  preamble  or  as  an  introduc- 
tion. 

It  is  now  necessary  to  try  to  prove  that  the 
semi-insane  do  not  exist  solely  in  the  imagination 
of  the  poets,  novelists,  and  dramatists. 


[32 


CHAPTER   II 

Refutation  of  the  Doctrines  which  Deny  the  Ex- 
istence of  the  "Demifous" 

I.  The  "  two-block  "  theory. 

A.  Explanation  of  the  theory. 

B.  Refutation. 

Human  individuality  is  one  and  indivisible ;  but  the  psy- 
chic organs  are  multiple  and  complex  and  can  be  partially 
changed. — The  psychic  centers  should  be  divided  into  superior 
and  inferior.  They  occupy  different  zones  in  the  cerebral  cor- 
tex.— Objections  to  this  way  of  looking  at  the  subject.— Dis- 
tinction between  menial  and  psychic,  between  the  insane  and 
the  semi-insane. 

II.  The  "  single-block  "  theory. 

A.  Explanation  of  the  theory. 

1.  Series  and  continuity  from  the  most  sensible  to  the  most 

insane. 

2.  Series  and  continuity  from  the  most  responsible  to  the 

most  suggestible  and  most  irresponsible. 

3.  Series  and  continuity  from  the  lowest  animal  to  man,  from 

absolute  determinism  to  free  will  which  does  not  exist. 

B.  Refutation. 

The  existence  of  a  great  many  intermediaries  between  two 
conditions,  or  two  phenomena,  does  not  prove  the  iden- 
tity of  these  two  conditions  or  of  these  two  phenomena. 

The  condition  of  sickness  is  different  from  the  condition 
of  health. 

Differences  between  nervous  temperament  and  nervous  dis- 
eases. 

The  necessity  of  making  a  distinction  between  the  sane  and 
the  insane,  between  the  responsible  and  the  irresponsible. 

'T^HE  scientific  demonstration  of  the  existence 
*       of  the  "demifous,"  or  semi-insane, should  be 
preceded  by  a  refutation  of  two  theories,  which, 
3  [33] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

starting  from  very  different  conceptions,  lead  to 
the  same  general  conclusion,  that  the  semi-insane 
and  the  semi-responsible  as  such  do  not  exist. 

According  to  the  first  theory,  which  is  extremely 
simple  and  easy,  one  is  either  insane  or  he  is  not 
insane,  he  either  is  or  is  not  responsible.  There 
is  no  middle  ground.  Humanity  is  divided  into 
two  groups,  the  group  of  reasonable  beings  and  the 
group  of  those  that  have  no  reason — the  group  of 
those  that  do  the  locking-up,  and  the  group  of 
those  who  are  locked  up.  This  is  the  "  two-block" 
theory. 

In  the  second  theory,  which  is  much  less  crude 
and  more  scientific,  there  are  neither  insane  nor 
sane  people ;  there  are  only  people  who  are  more 
or  less  sane.  It  all  becomes  a  question  of  degree. 
Mankind  is  graded  in  a  long  continuous  series,  in 
which  it  is  impossible  to  draw  a  boundary  line  be- 
tween the  insane  and  those  who  are  not  so ;  this  is 
the  "single-block"  theory. 

In  neither  of  these  two  points  of  view  is  there 
any  place  for  the  semi-insane. 

I.  THE  "TWO-BLOCK"  THEORY 

A.  One  might  say  that  this  first  theory  is  that 
of  the  world  at  large.  It  is  the  U7tmedical  theory, 
admitted  also  by  a  certain  few  physicians  whose 
number  is  diminishing  ever>^  day. 

[34] 


REFUTATION   OF   DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

This  theory  would  be  so  convenient  for  the  ex- 
ercise of  justice  that  most  magistrates  adopt  it,  or 
rather  would  like  to  impose  it  upon  physicians. 
Yes  or  no?  Is  the  accused  sane  or  is  he  insane? 
Is  he  or  is  he  not  responsible  for  the  crime  or  the 
misdemeanor  which  he  has  committed  ?  Shall  we 
condemn  him  or  shall  we  commit  him  ?  This  is 
the  dilemma  in  which  justice  would  like  to  trap 
the  expert,  who  has  the  appearance  of  trying  to 
evade  responsibility,  if  he  will  not  answer  categor- 
ically and  emphatically  yes  or  no. 

It  is  so  simple,  as  Michel  Cordayhas  made  one 
of  his  characters  say,  "  to  put  up  a  fence  around 
an  asylum,"  and  to  announce:  "  On  this  side  they 
are  insane ;  and  on  that  side  they  are  sane !  "  It 
is  so  natural  to  carve  the  world  into  two  parts:  on 
one  side  those  who  are  insane  because  they  are 
shut  up,  and  on  the  other  side  those  who  are  not 
insane  because  they  are  not  shut  up,  just  as  if  one 
could  say, "  All  those  in  the  cemetery  are  dead,  and 
all  those  outside  of  the  cemetery  are  living." 

In  this  ideally  simple  theory  everything  is  easy; 
there  is  on  one  side  a  mass  of  reasonable  people, 
and  on  the  other  side  a  mass  of  insane  people; 
between  the  two  there  is  a  deep  moat  and  a  wall 
pierced  here  and  there  with  several  openings  which 
from  time  to  time  permit  a  few  who  must  change 
their  "  block  "  to  pass  from  one  side  to  the  other. 

[35] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

There  is,  therefore,  no  such  thing  as  a  semi- 
insane  or  a  semi-responsible  person. 

Diminished  responsibiHty  is  an  invention  of  per- 
plexed physicians  who  but  half  hide  under  this 
word  their  ignorance  or  their  cowardice ;  it  is  the 
conclusion  of  experts  who  either  do  not  know 
their  subject  or  who  do  not  wish  to  compromise 
themselves  by  a  frank  statement. 

As  was  said  by  a  lay  journal  of  wide  circulation, 
apropos  of  the  affair  of  the  poisoner  of  Auch,  no 
one  understands  the  meaning  of  this  expression: 
"  Diminished  responsibility:  .  .  .  one  either  is  re- 
sponsible or  one  is  not,  but  it  is  very  hard  to  con- 
ceive that  there  are  halves  or  thirds  or  quarters  of 
responsibility.  In  what  balance  will  one  weigh 
these  questions  of  responsibility,  these  fragmentary 
sins?  And  will  they  decide,  when  they  discuss 
the  question  of  punishment,  that  the  condemned 
shall  be  only  semi-guillotined?" 

It  would  really  be  very  annoying  to  see  jurors 
or  magistrates  attach  any  importance  to  sallies  of 
this  order.  But  this  humorous  article  expresses  a 
theory  which  has  some  pretense  toward  being 
scientific,  and  which,  in  another  chapter,  we  shall 
see  upheld  by  very  excellent  minds  (medical  and 
legal)  and  which  therefore  we  must  study. 

I  believe  that  this  "two-block"  theory  has  no 
real  scientific  basis  whatever. 

[36] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

B.  To  support  this  "two-block"  theory  one 
must  start  with  the  idea  of  the  unity  and  the  indi- 
visibility of  the  reasonable  and  responsible  human 
being.  When  this  one  and  indivisible  ego  is 
intact,  the  subject  possesses  reason  and  responsi- 
bility; when  this  ego  is  destroyed,  changed,  or  dis- 
eased, the  subject  has  lost  his  reason  and  his  re- 
sponsibility, and  is  insane  and  irresponsible.  Being 
indivisible  in  his  unity,  this  human  being  can  not 
be  partially  destroyed  or  changed;  he  can  not, 
therefore,  have  either  partial  insanity  nor  dimin- 
ished responsibility ;  hence  there  are  no  semi-insane 
nor  semi-responsible  people. 

The  error  of  this  line  of  reasoning  does  not  lie 
in  the  idea  of  a  one  and  indivisible  human  person- 
ality. I  freely  admit,  for  my  own  part,  the  unity 
and  the  indivisibility  of  the  human  being.  But  it 
is  not  with  this  human  being  that  the  physician  is 
dealing  when  he  studies  the  question  of  insanity 
and  of  responsibility.  The  physician  is  only  inter- 
ested in  the  organs  through  which  this  person's 
life  is  manifested,  and  these  organs,  altho  they 
may  form  a  living  unity,  are  in  themselves  essen- 
tially multiple,  complex,  and  divisible. 

It  is  necessary  here,  therefore,  to  lay  down  this 
first  proposition;  I  shall  not  take  up  at  all  in  this 
book  the  principles  of  thought  or  of  the  psychic 
life;    I  have  only  in  mind  the  nervous  apparatus 

[37] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

by  which  this  psychic  life  is  exercised  and  mani- 
fested. I  shall  speak  only  of  the  brain,  the  materi- 
al organ  necessary  to  the  actual  exercise  of  human 
thought.  I  shall  not  deal  with  the  immaterial 
and  immortal  elements  which  certain  religions 
and  certain  philosophies  admit  under  the  name  of 
soul.  The  most  ardent  spiritualists  readily  admit 
that  in  actual  life,  as  we  study  it,  the  soul  can  not 
think  without  the  brain.*  They  also  admit,  all  of 
them,  that  madness  is  a  disease  not  of  the  soul, 
but  of  the  body.  The  study  of  it  therefore  be- 
longs to  physicians  who  know  nothing  and  study 
nothing  but  the  body  and  who  often  find  in  such 
patients  actual  lesions  of  the  brain. 

Therefore,  when  I  study  the  question  for  the 
purpose  of  knowing  whether  there  are  or  are  not 
semi-insane  people,  I  have  nothing  to  do  with  any 
question  except  one  of  pure  physiology ;  the  vari- 
ous religious  and  philosophic  schools  need  not  ex- 
pect, or  at  least  they  will  not  find,  in  the  present 
study  either  confirmation  or  refutation  of  their 
doctrines. 

Thus  stated  and  limited,  on  a  very  definite  and 
exclusively  medical  ground,  the  problem  would 
seem  easy  to  solve.    The  question  comes  back  to 

'  See  :  "  Pensde  et  Cerveau,"  "  La  Doctrine  Biologique  du  Double 
Psychisme  et  le  Spiritualisme,"  "R^ponse  au  Docteur  Surbled," 
Revue  de  Philosophic,  1906,  t.  iv.,  p.  201. 

[38] 


REFUTATION    OF   DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

us  whether  the  nervous  mechanism  which  directs 
thought  is  a  single  and  individual  organ  like  the 
human  being  himself,  or  if,  on  the  contrary,  it  con- 
stitutes a  complex  apparatus  formed  by  a  great 
number  of  different  neurons,  and  of  various  group- 
ings of  neurons  (psychic  centers)  which  are  of  dif- 
ferent values  in  the  thinking  process. 

In  order  scientifically  to  defend  the  two-block 
conception,  the  psychic  centers  themselves  ought 
to  constitute  a  single  and  indivisible  whole.  Then 
one  could  say :  This  single  and  indivisible  appa- 
ratus is  diseased  or  it  is  not  diseased ;  if  it  is  dis- 
eased, the  subject  is  insane  and  irresponsible ;  if  it 
is  not  diseased,  the  subject  is  sane  and  responsible. 

If  on  the  contrary  this  nervous  mechanism  has 
nothing  whatever  of  that  unity  or  indivisibility 
which  belongs  to  the  human  being,  if  it  is  a  mul- 
tiple, complex,  and  divisible  organ,  it  ought  to  be 
perfectly  possible  and  easy  to  conceive  of  a  lesion 
taking  place  in  a  part  of  these  centers,  and  in  con- 
sequence a  diminution,  without  loss,  of  reason,  and 
an  attenuation,  without  suppression,  of  responsi- 
bility. 

The  whole  question  therefore  comes  back  to  the 
necessity  of  knowing  whether  the  psychic  centers 
are  or  are  not  a  single  and  indivisible  organ ;  and 
for  that  it  is  necessary  to  know  whether  or  not  they 
are  localized  in  this  or  that  part  of  the  nervous 

[39l 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

organs  as  is  the  case  with  the  other  great  func- 
tions, such  as  the  sensory-motor  and  sensorial,  etc. 

Certain  authors  (Munk,  Pitres,  Surbled)  have 
very  distinctly  said  that  the  psychic  centers  can 
not  be  localized. 

In  his  opening  address  at  the  Congress  of  Nancy 
(1897)  Pitres  said  that  the  psychic  neurons  slip 
through  even  the  anatomoclinical  method,  and  that 
"  the  functions  that  are  attributed  to  them  can  not 
be  localized."  Munk  characterizes  these  researches 
on  the  localization  of  the  psychical  centers  as  "  a 
thought  play."  And  Surbled  formally  states:  "As 
for  the  psychical  and  intellectual  faculties,  they 
have  neither  seat  nor  organ ;  they  are  not  locali- 
zable."  * 

This  is  an  error  which  seems  to  me  to  be  caused 
by  a  confusion  of  words. 

First  it  is  impossible  to  say,  with  Surbled,  that 
the  localization  of  the  psychism  is  philosophically 
impossible.     Why  should  it  be  impossible.? 

In  any  philosophical  or  religious  doctrine  one 
can  not  deny  that  there  are  neurons  whose  integ- 
rity is  necessary  for  psychical  functions  and  for  the 
accomplishment  of  psychic  acts.  It  is  only  a 
question  of  knowing  whether  these  neurons  are 
localized  \vi  any  region  whatsoever  of  the  nervous 

'This  opinion   is  equally  defended   by  certain  classics.     See 
Dupr^ :  **  Traits  de  Pathologic  Mentale  de  Gilbert  Ballet,"  p.  1058. 

[40] 


REFUTATION   OF   DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

centers  or  whether  they  are  diffused  to  some  ex- 
tent through  all. 

To  the  question,  as  it  thus  stands,  science  has 
been  able  to  reply  yes  or  no.  It  would  be  able 
perhaps  even  to  modify  its  reply,  and  to  say 
whether  these  neurons  are  or  are  not  localized. 

But  I  do  not  understand  how,  in  the  name  of  any 
religious  or  philosophical  doctrine  whatsoever,  one 
can  declare  that  they  can  not  be  localized. 

On  exclusively  scientific  and  physiological 
grounds  one  can  not  any  longer  deny  the  possibil- 
ity of  this  localization.  One  can  say  that  the  vari- 
ous psychical  centers  are  not  yet  all  distinctly  and 
sharply  localized ;  there  is  certainly  still  much  to 
be  done  and  to  be  discovered  along  this  line;  but 
one  can  not  say  that  there  is  no  such  fact,  and 
above  all  that  there  is  no  possibility  of  it. 

I  have  tried  to  show  elsewhere  ^  that  if  the  ques- 
tion of  psychical  localization  is  so  far  behind,  while 
that  of  motor  and  sensory  localizations  is  so  ad- 
vanced, this  is  a  result  of  stating  the  question 
badly. 

It  is  evidently  impossible  to  consider  the  psy- 
chism  as  one  would  motility  or  vision,  and  to  want 

'"  Le  Probl^me  des  Localisations  Psychiques  dans  le  Cerveau," 
French  Congress  of  Medicine,  Paris,  October,  1904.  See  princi- 
pally "  Le  Psychisme  Infdrieur,"  "Etude  de  Physiopathologie 
Clinique  des  Centres  Psychiques,"  Biblioth^que  de  Philosophic 
Exp^rimentale,  1906. 

[41] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

to  localize  it,  as  it  were,  en  masse,  around  a  fissure 
or  in  a  group  of  convolutions. 

The  cerebral  cortex,  taken  as  a  whole,  is  psy- 
chic. One  can  even  limit  the  psychic  phenomena 
to  this  cortex.  The  psychic  neurons  must  be 
localized  in  the  cerebral  cortex. 

In  order  to  go  further,  and  to  localize  the  psy- 
chism  with  more  or  less  precision  in  the  cortex, 
one  must  make  a  psychological  analysis ;  and  one 
can  not  separate  the  psychical  functions  into  facul- 
ties— memory,  attention,  association  of  ideas,  etc. 
There  is  certainly  no  center  for  each  one  of  these 
functions. 

It  is  better  to  approach  the  question  from  an- 
other side  and  to  divide  the  psychical  functions 
into  three  groups : 

I.  The  motor-sensory  psychical  functions  or 
psychical  functions  of  external  relations.  2.  The 
unconscious  and  automatic  psychical  functions 
(subconscious  psychism).  3.  The  superior  psychical 
functions — those  which  are  conscious  and  volun- 
tary-.^ 

*  Without  its  being  necessary  to  contrast  his  expressions  and 
mine,  I  wish  to  refer  to  an  article  by  Edme  Tassy  ("  La  Psycho- 
logie  Actuelle  et  le  Degr^  de  Conscience,"  Mercure  de  France,  1906, 
p.  56),  in  which  one  reads:  "The  intellectual  life  is  at  one  and 
the  same  time  emotional,  mental,  and  psychic.  This  triple  divi- 
sion is  not  one  of  pure  theory  ;  it  corresponds  to  a  functional  real- 
ity which  justifies  the  study  of  the  pathology  of  the  mind;  one 
could  even  establish  on  this  distinction  a  classification  of  insanity 

[42] 


REFUTATION   OF   DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

The  anatomical  location  of  the  first  group  of 
psychical  centers  is  well  known  at  the  present  time. 
They  are  always  on  the  cortex,  on  the  external 
face,  the  perirolandic  zone  (general  sensibility  and 
motility)  and  the  middle  zone  of  the  first  and  sec- 
ond temporal  convolutions  (hearing) ;  on  the  in- 
ternal face,  the  pericalcarine  area  (sight),  and  the 
hippocampal  zone  (taste  and  hearing). 

The  centers  of  the  lower  psychism  appear  to 
occupy  the  middle  and  posterior  zones  of  the  asso- 
ciation centers  of  Flechsig.  The  meeting-points 
of  these  long  association  systems  would  be  the 
central  areas  of  these  zones;  the  middle  portion  of 
the  angular  gyrus  and  the  third  temporal  convolu- 
tion. It  is  necessary  to  add  to  these  the  corpus 
callosum,  as  it  represents  all  the  bundles  which 
connect  the  psychical  centers  of  one  hemisphere 
with  those  of  the  other. 

Finally,  the  higher  psychical  centers  seem  to  be 
contained  in  the  prefrontal  lobe,  or  prerolandic 
areas;  the  frontal  lobes,  less  the  ascending  fron- 
tal, and  the  base  of  the  three  frontals  (to  which 
must  be  added  the  ascending  parietal  and  the 
paracentral    lobule).      This   latter     has   not    yet 


that  would  be  more  rational  than  most  of  those  held  at  the  present 
time.  If  it  is  more  delicate  to  make  a  distinction  between  a  psy- 
chical act  and  an  emotional  one,  the  functional  distinction  of  a 
mental  deed  is  clearly  outlined." 

[43] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

been  definitely  proved;  but  I  have  been  able  to 
get  together^  a  mass  of  clinical  evidence  which 
deserves  attention  and  which  proves  that  the 
problem,  if  it  has  not  been  solved,  is  not  at  least 
definitely  insoluble  by  reason  of  its  nature  and  by 
its  definition. 

It  seems  to  be  established  that  a  lesion  of  the 
prefrontal  lobe  is  more  often  accompanied  by 
profound  mental  disturbance,  such  as  the  loss  of 
free-will  and  conscience,  at  the  same  time  leaving 
intact,  or  almost  so,  the  functioning  of  the  lower 
psychisms;  that  is  to  say,  the  automatic  and  un- 
conscious psychism. 

Thus  one  of  these  patients,  observed  by  Cestan 
and  Lejonne,  would  reply  easily  to  questions  put 
to  her  when  they  were  simple  and  required  no  per- 
sonal effort ;  she  would  repeat  short  phrases,  pro- 
nounced in  her  hearing,  would  even  do  easy  sums 
of  addition,  such  as  three  and  four  or  six  and 
three.  But,  if  the  reply  were  more  complicated, 
and  required  a  certain  amount  of  reflection,  and 
distinctly  personal  intellectual  effort,  the  patient 
would  remain  passive,  replying  with  smiling  pla- 
cidity that  she  didn't  know,  and  would  not  even  try 
to  do  anything  more.  It  was  found,  at  the  autopsy 
of  this  patient,  that  there  was  a  tumor  of  the  fron- 
tal lobe. 

*"  Le  Psychisme  Infdrieur,"  p.  39a. 
[44] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

Facts  of  this  kind  (and  they  are  beginning  to  be 
numerous)*  prove  two  things:  first  (what  has  been 
known  for  a  long  time),  that  there  are  parts  of  the 
brain  necessary  to  superior  intellectual  functions ; 
in  the  second  place  (what  has  been  more  recently 
acquired),  that  the  disease  of  these  parts  of  the 
brain  does  not  suppress  all  intellectuality,  that 
there  are  other  parts  of  the  brain  which  also  pre- 
side over  the  psychism,  an  inferior  psychism  no 
doubt,  but  a  real  psychism  nevertheless. 

The  opponents  of  this  doctrine  will  not  give  in, 
and  most  energetically  uphold  their  old  way  of 
looking  at  it. 

"  Be  it  as  it  may,"  says  Surbled,'  in  a  recent 
article, "  science  has  taken  a  step  in  progress  which 
Prof.  J.  Grasset  alone  does  not  wish  to  admit,  and 
of  which  he  will  take  no  notice.  She  no  longer 
permits  us  to  question  \\-i^  unity  of  the  cerebral  life, 
which  is  so  splendidly  set  forth  by  facts,  and  she 
lets  us  have  a  glimpse  of  the  day  when  brain  func- 
tioning will  explain  this  life  under  its  double  form, 
with  the  ego  and  the  subego  so  closely  associated 
and  mingled  in  their  multiple  manifestations  of 
the  psychical  life  where  they  uphold  owx  personal- 
ity, which  is  always  one  and  the  same. 

*  I  have  quoted  forty-six  of  such  cases  in  my  "  Psychisme  In- 
fdrieur." 
'"  Le  Sous  moi,"  La  Pens^e  Contemporaine,  1906. 

[45l 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

Is  there  any  need  for  me  to  recall  that  I  have 
never  denied  this  "personality  which  is  always 
one  and  the  same  "  ?  I  maintain,  however,  that 
the  organ  of  this  personality,  the  psychical  center, 
is  multiple  and  divisible;  in  just  the  same  way 
that  the  unity  of  the  living  being  does  not  prevent 
there  being  complexity  and  divisibility  of  the  body 
and  of  its  organs. 

It  is  remarkable,  moreover,  that  in  this  same 
article  Surbled  studies  with  much  clinical  good 
sense  the  dissociation  of  the  ego  and  of  the  sub- 
ego  (that  is  to  say,  of  O  and  of  the  Polygon  of  my 
scheme). 

In  somnambulism,  he  says,  "it  is  probable  that 
there  is  an  act  of  dissociation  in  the  encephalic 
organs  which  by  their  harmonious  functioning 
execute  the  acts  of  our  conscious  life  and  assure 
our  personality.  This  dissociation  is  of  the 
same  order  as  that  on  which  natural  sleep  de- 
pends." 

In  neuropaths,  "  the  ego  and  the  subego  cease 
to  be  one  and  conjointly  responsible.  .  .  . 
In  consequence  psychic  activity  escapes  in  a 
considerable  degree  from  the  control  of  reason, 
from  the  ego,  and  falls  into  a  too  restricted  de- 
pendence upon  the  subconscious  ego,  that  is  to 
say,  into  a  state  of  unconsciousness."  In  hysteria 
"the  functioning  of  the  brain  is  more  or  less  dis- 

[46] 


REFUTATION  OF   DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

sociated,  and  the  subconscious  ego  extends  and  en- 
larges its  empire,  to  the  detriment  of  the  egol'  In 
hypnosis  "consciousness  no  longer  exists.  The 
unity  of  our  life  seems  ruptured,  and  the  brain, 
given  up  to  suggestions  from  without,  is  capable 
of  nothing  but  an  automatism  as  perfect  as  it  is 
unconscious.  The  subego  rules  as  master,  but 
acts  blindly." 

I  have  never  held  anything  else.  One  must 
therefore  realize  that  the  disagreement  between  my 
contradictors  and  myself  is  more  apparent  than 
real. 

Without  doubt,  Surbled  adds  (and  this  is  differ- 
ent from  what  I  teach) :  "  The  ego  and  the  subego 
have  the  same  organic  substratum,  the  same  cere- 
bral localization."  I  believe  to  have  shown  the 
contrary.  How  can  we  understand  these  dissocia- 
tions between  the  ego  and  the  subego,  if  they  are 
united  in  the  same  location  ?  How,  above  all,  shall 
we  understand  their  simultaneous  and  distinct 
functioning,  at  certain  times,  as  in  distraction  ? 

In  any  case,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  may  be  stated, 
as  a  proved  scientific  proposition,  that  the  cere- 
bral centers  of  thought  and  of  reason  are  complex 
and  divisible. 

Thus  the  basis  of  the  "  two-block  "  theory  which 
I  am  combating  completely  disappears  from  view ; 
this  whole  theory  resting  on  the  unity  and  indivisi- 

[47l 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

bility  of  the  psychical  centers  which  are  either  in- 
tact or  diseased.  This  principle  is  scientifically 
wrong,  and  we  no  longer  see  on  what  the  theory 
could  now  be  established. 

The  cerebral  center  of  reason  and  of  thought 
being  complex  and  divisible,  one  understands  that 
there  may  be,  in  men  of  good  health,  an  unequal 
development  of  certain  faculties,  and  one  can  fore- 
see the  theme  which  I  shall  develop  a  Httle  later 
(Chap.  IV)  that  a  man  may  be  intelligent  and  yet 
irrational,  and  that  a  man  of  talent  and  even  of 
genius  may  nevertheless  be  lacking  in  good  sense. 
One  can  also  foresee  that  according  to  the  number 
and  the  nature  of  the  psychic  neurons  affected,  in 
a  given  person,  reason  may  be  completely  sub- 
merged or  only  partially  altered  in  a  proportion 
varying  according  to  the  case. 

If  the  word  mental  is  to  keep  its  old  meaning  of 
psychic  superiority,  the  word  jz5»j'jj/^-^2^  has  a  much 
wider  meaning,*  the  mental  being  a  part  of  the 
psychic.  It  is  thus  possible  to  understand  that 
changes  in  the  inferior  psychism  which  disturb 
the  reason,  without  destroying  it,  are  those  which 
make    the    semi -insane,   while    more    profound 

'There  is  no  need,  I  think,  to  repeat  that  I  do  not  attach  any 
ontologic  value  tD  this  distinction  of  mental  and  of  psychic, and 
that  I  have  not  in  any  degree  the  desire,  with  which  I  have  been 
reproached,  of  resuscitating   the  distinction  between  viens  and 

[48] 


REFUTATION   OF   DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

changes  of  the  superior  psychism  destroy  the  rea- 
son altogether  and  render  the  individual  insane. 

In  short,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  integ- 
rity or  disease  of  the  psychic  centers,  we  have 
hitherto  recognized  that  there  are  three  groups  of 
clinical  facts:  i.  The  cases  in  which  the  psychical 
centers  are  affected  in  sufificiently  large  number  to 
render  the  subject  insane.  2.  The  cases  in  which 
the  various  psychical  centers  are  sufficiently  intact 
for  the  subject  to  be  rational.  3.  The  cases  in 
which  only  a  part  of  the  psychical  centers,  and 
these  the  least  elevated,  are  afflicted.  In  the  last 
group  the  psychical  alteration  is  not  sufficiently 
wide-spread  to  lead  to  insanity ;  it  is  nevertheless 
sufficient  to  render  the  psychic  functioning  not 
quite  normal,  and  these  cases  form  the  demifous, 
or  the  semi-insane. 

In  other  words,  the  actual  idea  of  psychical  cen- 
ters forces  us  to  admit  two  classes  of  patients,  the 
mental  and  the  psychic.  The  mentally  afflicted 
have  lost  their  reason,  free-will  and  conscience, 
and  their  superior  intellectuality;  they  are  insane. 
The  psychically  afflicted  have  not  lost  all  that  goes 
to  make  up  reason  and  superior  thought,  but  they 
are  nevertheless  disturbed  in  their  psychism,  which 
is  not  normal ;  they  are  semi-insane. 

Therefore,  on  the  one  side  there  are  the  normal, 
and  on  the  other  there  are  the  diseased.     But 

[49] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

among  the  latter  one  must  distinguish  the  men- 
tally sick,  who  are  insane,  from  the  psychically 
sick,  who  are  semi-insane. 

The  "  two-block  "  theory,  therefore,  can  not  be 
maintained.  Humanity  is  not  divided  into  insane 
and  sane.  The  psychical  centers  are  many  and 
complex ;  disease  may  attack  them  in  different  de- 
grees. There  are  those  who  are  sick  and  those 
who  are  perfectly  well ;  but  among  the  sick  one 
must  distinguish  two  separate  groups:  the  insane 
and  the  semi-insane. 

II.  THE   SINGLE-BLOCK  THEORY 

At  the  othdr  extreme  of  modern  science,  among 
the  more  profound  and  advanced  physicians  and 
philosophers,  the  second  theory  holds  sway.  It 
differs  entirely  from  the  preceding  one,  but  like 
the  first  it  ends  in  denying  the  existence  of  the 
semi-insane  and  of  the  semi-responsible. 

A.  These  savants  no  longer  admit  that  there  are 
two  blocks,  the  one  of  intelligent  and  the  other 
of  unintelligent  individuals.  According  to  them, 
humanity  as  a  whole  consists  of  only  one  "  block." 
From  the  most  intelligent  to  the  least  intelligent, 
from  the  most  responsible  to  the  least  responsible, 
there  is  a  continuous  gradation. 

There  are  no  longer  any  semi-insane,  for  there  is 
nothing  but  insanity  in  a  world  in  which  every- 

[50] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

body  is  insane  in  a  different  degree.  The  medico- 
legal question  of  responsibility  is  swallowed  up 
and  disappears  in  the  question  of  universal  re- 
sponsibility or  irresponsibility. 

This  doctrine,  which  is  as  seductive  as  it  is  dan- 
gerous, is  constructed  upon  three  principles :  First, 
there  is  a  gradation  and  continuity  from  the  most 
reasonable  to  the  most  insane;  second,  there  is  a 
series  of  gradation  and  continuity  from  the  most 
reasonable  to  the  most  suggestible  and  the  most 
responsible;  third, there  is  a  gradation  and  conti- 
nuity from  the  lowest  animal  up  to  man,  that  is  to 
say,  from  absolute  determinism  to  free-will,  which 
latter  accordingly  can  not  exist. 

I  am  going  to  state  these  three  principles  fully 
before  discussing  them  as  a  whole,  and  will  then 
discuss  the  "  single-block  "  theory,  of  which  these 
principles  are  the  point  of  departure  as  well  as  the 
foundation. 

I.  There  is  a  gradation  and  continuity  from  the 
prefectly  reasonable  being  to  the  wholly  insane. 

In  a  general  way,  it  is  impossible  to  draw  any 
absolute  and  fixed  line  of  demarcation  between 
physiological  or  normal  phenomena  and  patholo- 
gical or  abnormal  disturbances. 

Where  does  fever  begin  and  end?  What  are 
the  border-lines  of  disease?  It  is  impossible  to 
say.     One  person  would  be  considered  perfectly 

[51] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

well  with  a  pulse  at  80  and  a  temperature  of  99.S* 
F.,  while  another  would  be  sick  with  a  pulse  of  72 
and  a  temperature  of  98.2°  F. 

Hericourt/  who  has  written  a  very  interesting 
book  on  the  "  Borderland  of  Disease,"  has  very 
clearly  shown  that  for  the  large  majority  of  cases 
the  state  of  health  and  that  of  disease  are  in  real- 
ity "  to  a  certain  extent  a  continuation  of  one  an- 
other; the  boundary-line  which  separates  them  is 
uncertain,  and  it  is  sometimes  impossible  to  define 
it."  The  condition  of  perfect  health  is  "  connected 
with  a  condition  of  manifest  disease  by  an  ascend- 
ing curve  which  mounts  very  slowly  and  on  which 
it  is  often  difificult  to  mark  the  point  where  disease 
can  be  said  to  commence." 

Along  the  same  lines  Charrin'  has  recently 
studied  the  oscillations  of  physiological  conditions 
and  has  concluded :  "  Apart  from  distinctly  specific 
affections,  the  very  nature  of  things  admits  that 
health  and  disease  frequently  present  points  of 
contact.  ...  A  physiological  condition  is  not  un- 
changeable. .  .  .  Unforeseen  factors  .  .  .  affect 
this  physiological  condition  by  repeated  variations, 
which  are  more  or  less  profound  and  susceptible 


*J.  H^ricourt:  "  Les  Fronti^res  de  la  Maladie,"  Bibliothdque 
de  Philosophic  Scientifique. 

'A.  Charrin:  "  Les  Oscillations  de  I'Etat  Physiologique,"  La 
Revue  du  Mois,  1906,  t.  i.,  p.  158. 

[52] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

of  leading  it  at  any  moment  beyond  the  borders 
from  the  side  of  health  over  to  the  other  side  on 
which  the  condition  may  be  considered  pathologi- 
cal." 

This  continuity,  this  lack  of  separation  and 
sharp  definition  between  a  physiological  state  and 
a  pathological  state  seems  still  more  evident  and 
real  for  the  psychism. 

There  is  no  difference  except  that  of  degree  be- 
tween a  dream  and  delusion.^  Everybody  dreams 
more  or  less,  and  the  delirious  person  is  often  only 
a  dreamer  who  goes  on  with  his  dreams  when 
he  is  wide  awake.  As  long  ago  as  1881  Lasegue 
showed  that  alcoholic  delirium  especially  is  a 
dream,  and  Regis  in  1893  studied  and  described 
the  occurrence  of  oniric  delirium  or  dream  de- 
lirium {<>•'' ap  o'^tifjo^)  in  all  of  the  intoxications  and 
infections. 

Between  calm,  cold  reason  and  a  transport  of 
passion,  between  originality  and  eccentricity,  be- 
tween nervousness  and  agitation,  between  a  person 
who  is  slightly  touched  and  one  who  is  demented 
there  are  all  degrees  of  transition,  and  it  is  impos- 
sible to  say  where  insanity  begins.  A  sharp  line 
of  demarcation  would  be  arbitrary  and  false. 

"  A  man  corresponding  to  the  ideal  type  of  nor- 

*  See  Lucien  Lagriffe  :  "  Du  R^ve  au  Ddlire,"  Gazette  des  Hopi- 
taux,  1902,  p.  453. 

[53] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

mal  anatomy  and  physiology  as  well  as  perfect 
mentality  does  not  really  exist  anywhere,"  says 
Hericourt.  "  On  the  other  hand,  we  all  of  us  show 
some  defects,  some  anomalies,  and  some  weak 
points." 

And,  as  Michel  Corday  says,  "  the  greatest  men- 
tal misery  "  is  only  an  exaggeration  of  these  little 
miseries.  "  Wait,"  cries  Parrot,  "  look  around 
you,  on  all  your  little  company.  Do  you  not  be- 
lieve that  all  your  comrades  are  more  or  less 
cracked.?  .  .  .  Think  of  the  slight  knocks  which 
would  break  their  reason  completely  and  make 
them  totally  insane.  ...  It  is  only  a  question  of 
degree." 

Bernheim  *  has  denied  the  existence  of  hysteria, 
as,  with  Delboeuf  and  Hartenberg,  he  has  denied 
the  existence  of  hypnotism.  After  having  quoted 
a  phrase  of  Lasegue  and  one  of  mine' he  adds: 
"  I  believe  that  the  definition  of  hysteria  is  impos 
sible,  because  hysteria  is  not  a  morbid  entity  and 
not  a  disease." 

There  are  two  things,  he  says,  in  hysteria:  the 

'  Bernheim  :  "  Conception  du  Mot  Hysteric,"  Revue  M^dicale 
de  TEst.  et  Doin,  1904, 

'  Lasegue  has  said  (Archives  G^n^rales  de  Mddecine,  1878) 
that  "the  definition  of  hysteria  has  never  been  given,  and  never 
will  be";  and  I  have  added  ("  Dictionnaire  Encyclopddique  de 
Science  M^dicale,"  18S9),  "  I  do  not  know  whether  it  will  ever  be 
given  (tho  one  must  not  despair  of  any  progress);  but  I  know  that 
it  is  still  really  impossible." 

[54] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

attacks  and  the  manifestations  either  associated 
with  them  or  which  take  their  place. 

The  attacks  "  are  only  an  exaggeration  of  ordi- 
nary phenomena  of  a  psychological  nature."  Be- 
tween the  coldest  apathy  and  the  most  violent 
hysteria  we  find  every  state  of  transition,  passing 
by  various  degrees  of  emotionalism  and  of  nervous 
temperament.  There  are  people  who  are  more  or 
less  nervous,  more  or  less  sensitive  to  nervous  reac- 
tion, and  people  who  are  more  or  less  apt  to  be  hys- 
terical.   And  that  is  all. 

As  for  the  other  symptoms  or  stigmata  of  hys- 
teria Bernheim  strives  to  prove  that  one  finds 
them  also  in  people  who  are  not  apt  to  be  hyster- 
ical. Thus  the  anesthesia,  with  its  characteristics 
and  its  distribution,  is  found  outside  of  hysteria,  or 
rather  it  does  not  exist  in  hysteria ;  it  is  created 
by  "  the  mind  of  the  subject  and  is  often  brought 
into  existence  by  the  preconceived  idea  of  the  phy- 
sician who  is  looking  for  it."  The  same  is  true  for 
the  narrowing  of  the  field  of  vision.  "  The  peri- 
metric examination  of  the  eye  is  often  enough  to 
give  certain  people  the  idea  that  their  sight  has 
become  weaker  and  creates  a  more  or  less  notice- 
able narrowing  of  the  visual  field  which  suggestion 
can  sometimes  enlarge  again."  The  motor  stig- 
mata (paralyses,  contractures,  spasms  .  .  . )  are  met 
with  very  frequently  as  a  result  of  disease,  or  of 

[55] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

various  causes,  in  patients  who  are  by  no  means 
apt  to  be  hysterical,  and  in  all  cases,  Bernheim 
says,  they  are  not  at  all  more  frequent  in  hyster- 
ical patients  than  in  those  who  are  not  so. 

In  short,  according  to  this  eminent  neurologist, 
hysteria  does  not  exist.  There  are  only  people 
who  are  more  or  less  nervous  or  more  or  less  sen- 
sitive to  nervous  reaction. 

This  negative  conception  applies  to  all  neuroses 
if,  with  Dubois  *  of  Bern,  one  places  hysteria  in 
the  great  complex  group  of  the  psychoneuroses 
which  includes:  neurasthenia,  hysteria,  hystero- 
neurasthenia,  the  milder  forms  of  hypochondria 
and  melancholia,  and  finally  certain  more  serious 
unbalanced  conditions  which  approach  insanity,  of 
which  he  says:  "  I  insist  at  the  start  on  the  impos- 
sibility of  sharply  defining  the  boundaries  between 
neurasthenia,  hysteria,  hypochondriacal  and  mel- 
ancholic .conditions." 

Maurice  de  Fleury'  has  said:  "As  for  Dubois, 
all  his  patients  can  be  hypnotized,  and  all  neuro- 
paths are  imaginary  invalids  amenable  only  to 
treatment  by  suggestion." 

'  Dubois  :  "  Les  Psychondvroses  et  leur  Traitement  Moral,"  pre- 
face de  Dejerine,  1904  (see  English  translation  by  Drs.  Smith  Ely 
Jelliffe  and  William  A.  White.  Funk  &  Wagnalls  Company, 
New  York). 

'  Maurice  de  Fleury :  "  Conference  Analys^e  dans  la  Gazette  des 
Hdpitaux,"  1904,  p.  1329. 

[56] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

Babinski's*  conception  of  hysteria  seems  to  be 
extended  to  include  all  the  neuroses  when  he  says 
that  the  only  common  characteristic  of  all  hyster- 
ical manifestations,  and  of  hysterical  manifesta- 
tions only,  is  "  the  possibility  of  being  reproduced 
by  suggestion  and  of  disappearing  under  the  exclu- 
sive influence  of  persuasion." ' 

This  is  how  these  writers  suppress  nervous  dis- 
eases, or  rather  how  they  join  them  to  nervous  tem- 
peraments and  to  physiological  conditions,  and  how 
they  strive,  in  consequence,  to  establish  the  first 
principle  of  this  single  "  block  "  theory.  And  they 
conclude :  there  is  a  continuous  series  from  the  nor- 
mal to  the  insane ;  the  whole  of  humanity  forms  one 
single  "block"  from  its  psychic  and  mental  make  up. 

2.  The  second  principle  is  easily  deduced  from 
the  first;  it  is  not  necessary  to  divide  men  into  a 
responsible  and  irresponsible  class ;  since  there  is 
only  one  continuous  series  of  human  beings,  all 
more  or  less  irresponsible.  The  jurists  find  them- 
selves beset  with  hesitation  and  doubt.  "  Is  there," 
asks  Saleilles,'  "from  the  pathological    point  of 


'  Babinski :  "  Definition  de  rHystdrie."  Socidtd  de  Neurologic, 
November  7,  1901.     Revue  Neurologique,  igci,  p.  1074. 

'  Babinslti  proposes  to  replace  the  word  hysteria  by  the  word 
pithiaiisme  from  nrdiu)  (persuasion)  and  Larai^  (curable) ;  a  psychic 
condition  which  manifests  itself  by  symptoms  which  can  be  cured 
by  persuasion. 

•Saleilles:  Loc.  cit.,  p.  148. 

[57] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

view,  any  sharp  distinction  between  a  man  with  a 
healthy  mind  and  sound  reason,  who  permits  him- 
self to  be  overcome  by  a  passing  attack  of  a  crimi- 
nal nature,  and  another  who  allows  this  nature  to 
become  chronic?  and  is  there  any  difference  be- 
tween this  latter  individual  and  the  abnormally 
pathological  man?  The  transition  between  the 
natural  criminal  and  the  insane  man  is  already  be- 
ginning to  disappear,  so  that  one  can  foresee,  if 
this  first  point  be  gained,  that  the  second  will  be 
won  still  more  easily.  For  the  difference  between 
a  sharp  attack  and  a  chronic  attack  is  only  one  of 
permanence  in  intensity  and  not  in  the  patholog- 
ical or  psychological  character  of  the  criminal  deed 
at  the  moment  when  it  was  committed." 

Clinically  Bernheim  has  excellently  developed 
this  doctrine  of  the  continuous  gradation  of  re- 
sponsibilities from  the  most  complete  to  the  most 
incomplete.* 

Hypnotic  suggestion  does  away  with  responsi- 
bility; that  is  evident.  An  individual  to  whom  it 
has  been  suggested,  in  a  hypnotic  state,  that  he 
should  commit  a  crime,  and  who  commits  it,  is 
not  responsible.  But,  according  to  Bernheim,  the 
word  suggestion  has  a  very  broad  meaning  and 
includes  persuasion,  advice,  and  teaching — every 

'  See  "  L'Hypnotisme  ct  la  Suggestion,"  pp.  57  et  458. 
[58] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

means  that  one  psychism  can  use  to  act  on  another 
psychism.  Suggestion  means  every  idea  accepted 
by  the  brain,  "whether  this  idea  comes  by  the 
ear,  exprest  by  another  person,  by  the  eyes,  or  is 
formulated  in  writing,  or  is  gathered  from  the  ex- 
pression of  a  face ;  whether  it  springs  spontaneously 
into  existence,  awakened  by  an  internal  impres- 
sion, or  is  developed  by  circumstances  in  the  outer 
world.  Whatever  may  be  the  origin  of  this  idea 
it  constitutes  a  suggestion." 

"  Regarded  from  this  point  of  view  the  doctrine 
of  suggestion  takes  on  remarkable  proportions ;  it 
includes  the  whole  of  humanity,  because  sugges- 
tion, wherever  it  may  come  from,  is  the  idea,  with 
all  its  consequences,  which  acts  upon  the  brain 
and  becomes  a  deed.  ...  It  is  in  all  current  ideas 
which  one  comes  across,  in  imitation,  in  the  in- 
stincts which  rest  on  preconceived  opinions,  in 
philosophic,  religious,  political,  and  social  educa- 
tion, in  reading,  in  the  stimulation  and  opinion  of 
the  press."  Suggestion  is  therefore  in  every  deed ; 
all  men  act  under  its  influence ;  *  they  only  differ 
from  one  another  by  the  degree  of  their  suscepti- 
bility. ...  And  these  ideas  are  not  the  exclusive 
property  of  a  single  professor  of  Nancy.  Crocq 
and  many  other  good  thinkers  declare  that  Bern- 

'  Bcrnheim  even  speaks  somewhere  of  "  hereditary  suggestions." 

[59] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

heim's  definition  of  suggestion  is  "the  best  which 
has  been  given  up  to  the  present  time." 

All  these  authors,  who  with  Bernheim  look 
upon  suggestion  as  any  sort  of  psychic  influence 
which  may  act  on  another  psychism,  by  so  doing 
extend  enormously  the  idea  of  irresponsibility,  or 
rather  they  suppress  it  in  order  to  replace  it  by  a 
continuous  chain  of  responsibilities  which  become 
more  or  less  diminished,  and,  to  apply  and  develop 
the  phrase  of  Tarde,^  they  hold  that  absolute  re- 
sponsibility and  absolute  irresponsibility  are  ideal 
limitations  which  are  not  realized  by  facts. 

Bernheim  outlines  the  doctrine  with  great  ability. 
"Suggestion,"  he  says,  "plays  a  role  in  nearly 
every  crime."  And  he  shows  this  in  the  crime  of 
^mile  Henry,  the  young  anarchist  who  threw  a 
bomb  at  the  Hotel  Terminus,  and  in  the  crime  of 
Pranzini,  who,  in  order  to  steal  from  her,  assassi- 
nated a  charming  woman  whom  he  was  in  the  habit 
of  visiting.  Under  the  form  of  autosuggestion  he 
finds  the  same  element  of  diminution  of  responsi- 
bility in  cases  where  there  is  no  question  of  hyp- 
notism, as  in  the  affair  of  Meunier,  who  without 
any  outside  suggestion,  in  order  to  marry  a  woman, 
killed  a  priest  and  his  servants  so  that  he  could 
rob  them,  burned  his  house,  killed  one  of  his  chil- 

'Tarde,   cited  by  Henri  Lemesle:   "  L'tvolution  de  I'ldde  de 
Responsabilit^."  Revue  de  rHypnotisme,  t.  x.,  p.  304. 

[60  , 


REFUTATION  OF   DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

dren,  and  then  a  stranger.  All  insane  persons  be- 
come subject  to  suggestion.  The  crimes  of  mobs 
are  equally  due  to  autosuggestion.  "  The  princi- 
pal suggestive  influences,"  says  Schrenk-Notzing, 
"  come  from  the  social  environment  of  education, 
religion,  fashion,  politics,  the  press,  and  principally 
from  the  infectious  agitations  caused  by  fanaticism 
and  superstition.  Psychic  contagions  of  this  na- 
ture have  often  led  to  crime." 

Bernheim  clearly  foresees  the  objections  to  this. 
"I  still  hear  you  say:  According  to  your  idea 
everything  is  suggestion.  If  you  doubt  determin- 
ism and  free-will  and  moral  responsibility,  what 
shall  we  come  to?  If  man  has  evolved  by  reason 
of  his  own  organization,  why  struggle?  What! 
He  led  himself  away?  God  and  the  devil  led 
him!  This  is  fatalism.  It  is  a  denial  of  human 
dignity  and  will."  Certainly,  he  adds :  "Anyone 
who  draws  such  a  conclusion  from  our  doctrine 
has  not  conceived  it  clearly."  But  he  does  not 
show  in  what  way  these  deductions  of  the  adver- 
sary are  false.  And  he  concludes  his  report  made 
at  the  Congress  of  Moscow  thus: *  "  Sixthly,  sug- 
gestion—that is  to  say,  ideas,  wherever  they  come 
from — acting  on  the  brain,  plays  a  role  in  nearly 

'  Bernheim  :  "L'Hypnotisme  et  la  Suggestion  dans  leurs  Rap- 
ports avecia  Mddecine  Legale."  Rapport  au  Congr^sde  Moscou, 
1897,  pp.  loi  and  102. 

[61] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

every  crime.  .  .  .  Tenthly,  absolute  free-will  does 
not  exist.  Moral  responsibility  is  most  often  im- 
possible to  appreciate." 

From  this  doctrine  of  Bernheim  one  can  draw 
two  conclusions  which  are  identical  in  spite  of 
their  opposition,  and  admit  that  either  all  men 
are  irresponsible  or  that  they  are  all  responsible. 
Thus  we  have  the  basis  of  the  second  principle  of 
the  "single-block"  theory;  the  continuous  series 
from  the  most  irresponsible  to  the  most  responsible. 

3.  This  "  single-block  "  theory  is  finally  perfected 
and  completed  by  the  continuous  gradation  ad- 
mitted by  all  modern  evolutionists  from  the  pebble 
to  the  ameba,  and  from  the  ameba  to  man.  As 
determinism  is  unquestioned  in  the  mineral  world, 
one  will  find  it  more  or  less  complex  and  hidden, 
but  just  as  absolute  in  its  essence,  in  man.* 

"  A  line  of  conduct  where  morality  does  not 
come  into  the  question,"  says  Herbert  Spencer,* 
"is  transformed  by  imperceptible  degrees  in  a 
thousand  little  ways  into  a  conduct  which  is  either 
moral  or  immoral."  What  is  the  meaning  of  the 
words  good,  bad?  "  Conduct  is  good  or  bad  ac- 
cording as  the  special  acts  which  go  to  make  it  ur. 

'  See  "  Les  Limites  de  la  Biologic,"  4th  edit.,  p.  23,  and  "  Le  Psy 
chisme  Infdrieur,"  p.  438. 

*  Herbert  Spencer:  "Les  Bases  de  la  Morale  £volutioniste  " 
Biblioth^que  Scientifique  Internationale,  6th  edit.,  1880,  pp.  4  and 
17.     Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

[62] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

whether  well-adapted  or  badly  suited  to  special 
ends,  can  or  can  not  lead  in  the  general  end  to 
the  preservation  of  the  individual "  and  "  the  Hfe 
of  the  species." 

In  the  same  way  Le  Dantec*  has  studied  the 
will  of  the  plastids  and  has  gone  on  up  to  man : 
"  The  gradual  and  logical  transition  of  the  pro- 
tozoa up  to  man  authorizes  the  extension  of  the 
principle  of  inertia  to  every  body  in  nature." 
Everything  is  determined  in  man;  nothing  is  free ; 
we  have  only  "  an  illusion  of  will." 

"  Let  us  then,"  says  Duprat,'  "  have  the  honesty 
to  say  frankly  that  liberty,  such  as  it  has  too  often 
been  conceived,  is  an  illusion  due,  as  Spinoza  has 
shown,  to  ignorance  of  the  great  number  of  causes 
which  determine  our  decisions." 

According  to  Schopenhauer,'  "  human  acts  are 
absolutely  determined ;  .  .  .  the  will  is  a  phenom- 
enon of  the  same  order  as  the  reactions  of  the  in- 
organic world."     Pierre  Laffitte*  says,  "The  most 


'  Le  Dantec:  "  Le  D^terminisme  Biologique  et  la  Personnalit^ 
Consciente."  Biblioth^que  de  Philosophie  Contemporaine,  1897, 
p.  19.     Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

•Duprat:  "La  Morale.  Fondements  Psychologiques  d'une 
Conduite  Rationelle."  Biblioth^que  Internationale  de  Psychologic 
Exp^rimentale,  Normale  et  Pathologique,  1901,  p.  98. 

•Schopenhauer,  cited  by  Naville:  "  Le  Libre  Arbitre.  fitude 
Philosophique."  Biblioth^que  de  Philosophie  Contemporaine, 
1898,  p.  216. 

*  Pierre  LaflStte,  cited  by  Naville  :  Ibid.^  p.  247. 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

fundamental  result  of  the  development  of  science 
is  that  all  phenomena  are  submitted  to  unchanging 
laws,  from  the  phenomena  of  geometry  to  those  of 
man  and  society." 

Blichner*  writes:  "  Man  as  a  physical  and  intel- 
ligent being  is  the  work  of  nature.  It  follows  as  a 
result  that  not  only  his  whole  being,  but  also  his 
actions,  his  thought  and  feeling,  are  fatally  under 
the  sway  of  the  laws  which  rule  the  universe." 

Fouillee'  quotes  this  passage  of  Jean  Weber: 
"  Moral  law  is  the  most  insolent  encroachment  of 
the  world  of  intelligence  on  spontaneity.  .  .  .  Duty 
is  only  the  tyranny  of  worn-out  ideas  over  the 
new."  "  True  morality  is  that  of  the  deed ;  the 
accomplished  deed  always  carries  with  it  whole- 
hearted admiration  and  love,  for  the  universe 
which  can  judge  it  is  at  this  very  moment  a  result 
of  deeds ;  thus  we  say  well  done  to  him  who  has 
triumphed.  .  .  .  The  strongest  reason  is  always 
the  better.  This  proposition  is  meant  to  sound 
startling;  but  it  is  only  naive." 

We  may  find  this  rather  a  brutal  expression  of 
that  doctrine  which  is  a  justification  of  all  strokes 
of  victory,  all  inquisitions,  and  all  persecutions. 


'Biichner,  cited  by  Naville :  "  Le  Libre  Arbitre,"  p.  198. 

'  Fouillde  :  "Le  Mouvement  Id^aliste  et  la  Reaction  centre  la 
Science  Positive."  Biblioth^que  de  Philosophic  Contemporaine, 
1896,  p.  267.     Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

[64] 


REFUTATION   OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

But  here  (to  end  with)  is  the  conclusion  of  a  re- 
cent book  by  Albert  Bayet  ^  on  scientific  morality. 

"  On  the  ruins  of  ancient  metaphysical  or  relig- 
ious morality  the  author  tries  to  construct  on  the 
most  absolute  determinism  a  science  of  customs  (a 
study  of  deeds,  and  of  moral  deeds  only),  from 
which  he  deducts  a  moral  art;  that  is,  an  applied 
science,  or,  better,  the  science  of  applied  customs. 
He  naturally  during  his  statement  runs  across  the 
idea  of  individual  responsibility.  Very  carefully 
he  considers  this  *  holy  but  old-fashioned '  idea, 
which  has 'its  principles  and  foundations  in  classic 
morality.'  It  strikes  him  that  the  idea  is  'crack- 
brained  and  that  one  need  not  be  considered  over- 
bold if  he  prophesies  that  it  will  disappear.'  *  From 
the  moment,'  he  adds,  'that  one  admits  in  the  so- 
cial world  the  existence  of  laws  in  every  point  sim- 
ilar to  those  which  govern  the  fall  of  a  stone,  it  is 
just  as  childish  to  hold  an  individual,  whoever  he 
may  be,  responsible  for  his  acts,  as  to  blame  the 
stunted  tree  and  to  praise  the  vigorous,  healthy 
one.  All  endeavor  that  aims  to  lessen  severity  of 
such  consequences  is  wholly  antiscientific' " 

This,  then,  is  the  "single-block"  theory  entire 
and  complete,  and  pushed  to  its  final  consequences ; 

'Albert  Bayet :  "  La  Morale  Scientifique.  Essai  sur  les  Appli- 
cations Morales  des  Sciences  Sociologiques."  Biblioth^que  de 
Philosophic  Contemporaine,  1905. 

S  [65] 


THE  SEm-INSANE 

there  can  be  no  question  of  the  semi-insane  and 
semi-responsible,  since  there  is  not  even  any  pos- 
sibility of  making  a  distinction  between  the  insane 
and  the  sane  and  the  responsible  and  the  irre- 
sponsible. 

Scientifically  this  "  single-block  "  theory  should 
be  placed  considerably  above  the  "two-block"  the- 
ory. It  rests  on  actual  facts  which  have  been 
carefully  noted.  I  believe  it,  however,  erroneous 
in  the  deductions  which  forni  it  and  in  the  conclu- 
sions which  it  formulates. 

The  entire  structure  of  this  doctrine  rests  upon 
the  development  of  this  idea  which  I  hold  to  be 
false  and  antiscientific:  viz.,  the  existence  of  a 
great  many  intermediate  phases  between  two  states 
or  two  phenomena  proves  the  identity  of  these  two 
states  or  these  two  phenomena;  or,  rather,  any  two 
terms  of  a  series  are  identical  when  they  may  be 
bound  together  by  a  continuous  series  of  other 
terms. 

This  is  true  of  numbers.  Between  9  and  300 
there  is  only  a  difference  of  quantity;  it  is  also 
true  of  size  and  of  weights,  and  in  a  general  way  of 
terms  which  vary  only  in  a  single  particular  one 
from  another;  but  the  principle  is  none  the  less  in- 
applicable to  living  beings  or  to  phenomena  of  life. 
Between  a  lower  being  and  a  colony  of  the  same 
lower  beings  the  only  difference  is  one  of  number 

[66] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

or  degree ;  but  between  the  ameba  and  man  it  is 
vain  to  enumerate  terms  of  transition,  for  one  will 
never  establish  their  identity.  One  may  add  the 
ameba  to  himself  and  multiply  him  by  any  num- 
ber whatsoever,  and  one  will  never  make  a  man. 
Between  the  ameba  and  man  there  is  not  only  a 
difference  of  quantity^  but  a  difference  of  quality^ 
which  excludes  all  identification. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  nervous  phenom- 
ena of  man.  Between  the  simple  reflex  which 
makes  the  leg  jerk  when  the  knee-cap  is  percussed, 
and  the  highest  psychic  phenomenon  of  a  Shake- 
speare, a  Wagner,  or  a  Victor  Hugo,  during  the 
composition  of  a  masterpiece,  one  could  describe 
an  infinite  number  of  transition  terms,  which  es- 
tablish a  sort  of  continuous  series  from  one  phe- 
nomenon to  another.  What  does  that  prove? 
That  both  phenomena  are  nervous  phenomena 
like  those  in  a  series  by  which  we  have  just  proved 
that  the  ameba  and  man  are  both  living  beings. 
But  this  by  no  means  proves  that  these  are  identi- 
cal phenomena  or  are  identical  animals,  nor  that 
they  should  not  be  studied  apart  and  separately 
one  from  another. 

This  being  settled,  the  whole  "  single-block  "  the- 
ory disappears  completely  from  view. 

Since  the  time  of  Claude  Bernard  it  has  been 
admitted  (and  was  even  admitted  before  him,  but 

[67] 


J 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

with  less  scientific  proof)  that  pathological  phe- 
nomena are  of  the  same  kind  as  physiological  phe- 
nomena ;  both  are  manifestations  of  the  life  and 
functioning  of  the  same  living  beings.  But  that 
does  not  hinder  the  pathological  or  morbid  phe- 
nomena from  being  different  from  the  physiologi- 
cal or  normal  phenomena. 

Fever  is  a  very  different  symptom  from  an  ac- 
celeration of  the  pulse  caused  by  an  emotion.  Be- 
tween 97.7°  F.  and  104°  F.,  between  60  and  140 
beats,  there  may  be  every  grade  of  transition.  It 
is  even  impossible  to  fix  the  absolute  point  at 
which  one  can  say  that  a  physiological  condition 
ceases  and  passes  over  into  a  pathological  condi- 
tion. It  is  no  less  true  that  fever  exists  in  many 
pathological  phenomena,  and  that  there  is  a  path- 
ological functioning  of  the  organs  which  must  not 
be  confused  with  their  physiological  functioning, 
and  that  these  two  functionings  ought  to  be  de- 
scribed separately. 

Paralysis  is  quite  a  different  thing  from  the 
temporary  weakness  of  a  tired  muscle.  A  dream 
is  not  an  hallucination,  and  still  less  a  delusion. 

The  border-lands  of  disease  are  sometimes  very 
difficult  to  trace  exactly  by  reason  of  our  igno- 
rance; we  may  modify  our  sketches  of  them  in 
proportion  as  we  learn  better  how  to  analyze  the 
subject  and  make  a  more  rapid  diagnosis  of  its 

[68] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

condition.  But  these  boundaries  do  nevertheless 
exist;  there  are  sick  people  and  there  are  well 
people.  Some  one  of  these  perfectly  healthy  indi- 
viduals has,  under  the  influence  of  emotion,  a  slight 
constriction  of  the  throat  or  the  thorax ;  another 
may  tremble  for  a  moment;  a  third  will  stand  still 
for  a  minute ;  or  a  fourth  will  scream  out.  But 
we  can  not  conclude  that  these  are  miniature  hys- 
terical attacks:  an  attack  of  globus  in  the  first,  a 
convulsive  attack  in  the  second,  a  contracture  in 
the  third,  and  an  attack  of  delirium  in  the  fourth. 

There  may  be  a  great  many  intermediary  states 
in  which  the  diagnostician  will  hesitate  between  a 
nervous  temperament  and  a  neurosis— that  which 
one  calls  nervousness.  But  the  existence  of  these 
difficult  steps  of  transition  must  not  make  us  for- 
get the  very  distinct  cases  of  hysteria  such  as  we 
see  every  day. 

With  Colin  *  and  the  greater  number  of  neurol- 
ogists we  must  keep  hysteria  as  a  separate  disease, 
in  the  sense  we  generally  give  to  this  word,  and 
distinguish  it  absolutely  from  physiological  con- 
ditions. 

Still  less  can  we  strike  from  the  nosological  list 
all  the  neuroses,  and,  with  Dubois,  throw  them 
into  the  vague  and  confused  group  of  the  psycho- 

'  Colin:  "  Traitd  de  Pathologic  Mentale  de  Gilbert  Ballet,"  p. 
8i8. 

[69] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

neuroses.  This  would  suppress  with  one  stroke 
of  the  pen  all  the  clinical  work  of  this  last  half- 
century,  which,  apart  from  all  theoretical  ideas, 
has  from  the  clinical  point  of  view  admirably  de- 
fined and  separated  hysteria  and  neurasthenia. 
As  Maurice  de  Fleury  has  very  pointedly  said, 
"When  our  French  neurologists  had  succeeded 
during  the  last  few  years  in  drawing  the  distinct- 
ive characteristics  of  neurasthenia  and  hysteria 
out  of  the  old  chaos  of  nervousness,  Dubois 
plunged  them  back  into  it"  ;  and  he  has  thus  up- 
set the  whole  structure  of  the  history  of  the  neu- 
roses without  furnishing  any  new  clinical  argu- 
ments to  support  his  point  of  view. 

Therefore,  in  spite  of  a  more  or  less  continuous 
series  one  must  continue  to  distinguish  and  to 
consider  separately  physiological  and  pathological 
phenomena,  the  healthy  and  the  sick,  and  more 
especially  those  who  are  afflicted  with  diseases  of 
the  nervous  system  and  those  who  are  not  so 
afflicted. 

This  is  equally  true  of  the  functioning  of  our 
psychic  brain:  in  some  the  functioning  is  normal; 
in  others  it  is  abnormal  or  morbid.  We  must 
not  therefore  mass  all  the  sane  people  and  all  the 
insane  together  in  a  single  "  block." 

Among  the  diseased  we  have  already  seen  that 
we  must  distinguish  between  those  who  are  com- 

[70] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS   OF  EXISTENCE 

pletely  so  (the  irrational  or  insane)  and  those  who  are 
diseased  in  a  lesser  degree  or  who  are  only  passing 
through  short  transitory  attacks  (the  semi-insane). 

The  line  of  demarcation  may  perhaps  be  indefi- 
nite between  two  contiguous  groups,  and  differ- 
ential diagnosis  is  sometimes  difficult;  there  are 
some  subjects  in  diagnosing  whom  we  are  tempted 
to  perch  on  the  fence  which  separates  the  two 
adjacent  domains,  or  for  whom  we  would  like  to 
throw  a  bridge  across  the  moat  which  separates 
them.  But  the  existence  of  the  three  groups  is 
not  altered  on  that  account ;  in  spite  of  a  continu- 
ous series  of  gradations  and  intermediary  numbers 
we  must  distinguish  the  sane,  the  semi-insane,  and 
the  insane. 

The  same  line  of  reasoning  may  be  adopted  for 
responsibility. 

By  some  strange  abuse  of  words  there  has  come 
to  be  a  tendency  to  include  under  hypnotic  sug- 
gestion: teaching,  advice,  preaching,  and  all  the 
means  that  one  psychism  possesses  of  exercising 
influence  over  another  psychism.^ 

Whatever  Bernheim  may  say  about  it  (and  no 
one  dares  to  take  a  different  stand  in  these  ques- 
tions, for  fear  of  creating  a  disturbance),  true  sug- 
gestion— the  only  one  which  leads  to  irresponsi- 

*  See  "  L'Hypnotisme  et  la  Suggestion,"  pp.  457,  460,  and  498. 
t7i] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

bility  and  that  for  which  the  word  ought  to  be 
reserved — true  suggestion  presupposes  the  com- 
plete setting  aside  of  the  superior  center  of  control 
in  the  subject,  and  the  subjection  of  his  lower  cen- 
ters in  passive  obedience  to  the  superior  center  of 
the  hypnotizer.  When  one  addresses  himself  to 
the  subject's  polygon  alone,  entirely  separated 
from  his  O,  one  takes  away  from  this  subject  all 
responsibility  for  his  acts;  but  when  one  appeals  to 
the  superior  centers  of  the  subject,  the  responsi- 
bility for  the  act  which  he  might  commit  under 
this  influence  is  by  no  means  taken  away.  Sug- 
gestion is  a  pathological  phenomenon,  or  at  least 
an  extraphysiological  one,  and  not  everybody  can 
be  put  into  a  hypnotic  condition,  that  is  to  say 
into  a  state  of  suggestibility.  Advice,  persuasion, 
and  education  are  the  purely  physiological  means 
of  action,  to  which  each  one  is  accessible  in  differ- 
ent degrees. 

If  we  accept  in  medical  science  that  worldly  and 
unmedical  meaning  of  the  word  suggestion,*  which 
Bernheim  defends,  there  would  be  a  veritable  con- 
fusion in  the  language.  Then,  as  Pierre  Janet 
says,  we  would  find  described  under  the  same 
name  a  professor's  lessons  to  his  pupils  and  the 
hallucinations  that  might  be  called  up  in  a  hys- 

'  This  is  the  sense  in  which  one  says  that  a  costume  or  a  play  is 
"suggestive." 

[72] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

terical  person.  It  would  now  no  longer  be  possible 
to  distinguish  a  mental  disease  which  is  neverthe- 
less a  sad  reality,  from  a  psychological  condition. 

The  distinction  is  so  real  that  even  in  a  hypno- 
tizable  subject  not  everything  is  suggestive;  at 
certain  periods  of  his  life  one  can  give  him  advice 
or  orders  which  are  not  suggestions. 

One  may  try  to  persuade  or  insinuate  or  prove 
ideas  to  hearers  or  readers  without  previously  sep- 
arating or  destroying  their  superior  psychic  cen- 
ters. That  is  precisely  what  I  am  trying  to  do  in 
writing  this  chapter,  seeking  to  convince  the  O 
center  of  my  readers,  who  preserve  their  freedom 
to  criticize  and  their  faculty  of  control,  and  by  no 
means  to  impose  my  point  of  view  upon  their 
polygon  centers  after  the  fashion  of  the  hypnotizer 
who  makes  his  subject  eat  a  raw  potato  by  simply 
telling  him  that  it  is  a  delicious  peach.  Nor  can 
one  condemn  under  the  same  classification  and  in 
the  same  manner  the  socialist  whose  writings  or 
teachings  have  led  some  unfortunate  to  commit  a 
political  crime,  and  the  hypnotizer  who  has,  in 
hypnosis,  distinctly  suggested  to  a  sleeping  subject 
that  he  should  perform  this  same  crime. 

We  must  therefore  take  care  not  to  give  to  the 
various  motors  and  motives  of  our  acts  the  value 
of  a  suggestion,  in  the  medical  sense  (the  only  one 
which  we  hold)  of  this  word. 

[73] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Unless  a  man  is  really  insane,  he  has  always 
motives  or  moving  forces  for  even  his  criminal 
acts.  These  do  not  hinder  him  from  being  re- 
sponsible for  them,  if  he  has  a  sane  mind  and  if 
he  can  judge  of  the  character  of  his  act. 

It  is  therefore  impossible,  arguing  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  science  of  hypnotism  and  sug- 
gestion (which  Bernheim  has  contributed  so  largely 
in  building  up,  before  demolishing  it  altogether), 
to  say  that  there  are  neither  responsible  nor  irre- 
sponsible people ;  that  there  is  only  a  single  "  block" 
of  people  who  are  all  more  or  less  irresponsible. 

It  is  also  equally  antiscientific  to  maintain  that  the 
criminal  is  as  little  responsible  "  as  the  stunted  tree." 

I  admit  for  a  moment  that  man  and  a  tree  may 
be,  one  as  well  as  the  other,  subject  to  determin- 
ism ;  this  characteristic  will  bring  them  nearer  to- 
gether, but  will  not  make  them  identical.  The 
laws  of  such  determinism  differ  for  the  tree  and 
the  man.  For  the  tree,  the  earth,  air,  and 
moisture  are  the  only  elements  of  determination 
in  its  growth  and  its  movements.  In  man  there 
are  psychic  centers,  whose  individual  activities 
must  be  taken  into  account,  in  order  to  classify 
and  to  judge  of  the  moving  forces  and  the  motives 
that  precede  every  act.  This  is  a  cold,  scientific- 
ally established  fact. 

A  human  act  is  the  result  of  judgment  between 
[74] 


REFUTATION  OF  DENIALS  OF  EXISTENCE 

the  various  moving  forces  and  motives.  He  is  a 
responsible  man  who  has  healthy  nervous  centers 
and  who  is  in  a  condition  to  judge  sanely  the  com- 
parative value  of  these  various  moving  forces  and 
motives.  The  tree  having  no  psychic  centers  the 
question  never  comes  up  to  ascertain  whether  or 
not  it  should  be  held  responsible,  or  should  be 
pronounced  free  from  responsibility. 

Therefore,  even  tho  one  might  admit  a  similar- 
ity in  the  question  of  absolute  determinism  in  the 
case  of  the  man  and  the  tree,  yet  they  can  not  be 
compared  when  it  comes  to  a  question  of  re- 
sponsibility. 

In  order  to  protect  yourself  from  the  tree  which 
threatens  to  kill  you  by  falling,  it  is  enough  to  set 
up  sufficiently  strong  props  under  its  branches; 
but  in  order  to  protect  yourself  against  a  man  who 
threatens  to  kill  you  you  must  grant  him  knowledge 
and  furnish  him  with  the  moving  forces  and  motives 
which  will  hinder  him  from  committing  the  act. 

The  physician  has  to  judge  whether  or  not  a 
man  is  capable  of  appreciating  sanely  the  value  of 
these  various  moving  forces ;  he  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  question  of  the  tree. 

In  other  words,  even  supposing  that  one  should 
succeed  some  day  in  suppressing  moral  responsi- 
bility in  the  face  of  conscience,  and  in  suppressing 
merit  and   demerit,  virtue   and  vice,  and  entire 

[75] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

moral  obligation,  even  under  the  absolute  sway  of 
"scientific  morality,"  there  would  still  remain  the 
question^  of  social  responsibility  in  connection 
with  law  and  society,  which  responsibility  would 
vary  according  to  the  psychism  of  each  individual. 
Now,  so  far  as  this  responsibility  is  concerned,  as 
well  as  for  the  psychism,  it  is  scientifically  impossi- 
ble to  group  all  men  into  a  single  "  block  "  whose 
various  terms  differ  only  by  the  degree  of  psych- 
ism and  the  degree  of  responsibility. 

From  this  chapter,  which  has  perhaps  been  too 
long,  but  which  was  nevertheless  absolutely  indis- 
pensable to  establish  the  right  to  the  existence  of 
the  very  subject  of  the  book,  we  may  conclude 
that:  I.  It  is  scientifically  zmposst'd/e  to  group  all 
men  in  a  single  "block"  of  human  beings  of  more 
or  less  rational  and  more  or  less  responsible.  2. 
It  is  scientifically  impossible  to  divide  all  men  in 
two  "blocks,"  including,  on  the  one  hand,  the  irre- 
sponsible and  insane,  and,  on  the  other,  the  re- 
sponsible and  the  sane.  3.  The  ground  is  now 
cleared  of  those  doctrines  in  which  there  is  no 
place  for  the  semi-insane ;  it  is  therefore  possible 
scientifically  to  establish  the  existence  of  the  semi- 
insane.  This  medical  proof  of  the  existence  of  the 
demifous  is  what  I  shall  attempt  to  show  in  the 
following  chapter. 

*  See  on  this  question  the  third  paragraph  of  the  fifth  chapter. 
[76] 


CHAPTER   III 

Clinical  Proof  of  the  Existence  of  the  Semi-insane 
—Medical  Study 

I.  The  Semi-insane  according  to  Trdlat. 

1.  Imbeciles  and  Feeble-minded. 

2.  Satyriasists  and  Nymphomaniacs, 

3.  Monomaniacs. 

4.  Erotomaniacs. 

5.  Jealous  Patients. 

6.  Dipsomaniacs. 

7.  Spendthrift  and  Adventurous  Characters. 

8.  The  Conceited  or  Boastful. 

9.  Evil-doers. 

10.  Kleptomaniacs. 

11.  Suicides. 

12.  The  Inert. 

13.  Patients  with  Lucid  Mania. 

II.  The  Semi-insaneaccording  to  Present-day  Clinical  Neurology. 
A.  Symptoms  Observed  in  the  Semi-itisane. 

General  Classification  of  Functions  and  Psychic  Acts. 

1.  Illusions  and  Hallucinations. 

2.  Obsessions. 

1.  Phobias.     Morbid  Fears. 

2.  Ideative  Obsessions,  or  Obsessions  properly  so-called. 

3.  Delusions. 

4.  Impulsions. 

5.  Aboulias  and  Paraboulias. 

6.  Troubles  of  General  Sensibility. 

1.  Autoscopic  Plienomena. 

2.  False  Sensations  of  Disease.     Hypochondria. 

[77] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

3.  Discontent  and  Exaggerated  Contentment  (Euphoria 

of  the  Physical  Ego). 

4.  Disturbances  of  some  Particular  Cenesthetic  Sensations. 

7.  Disturbance  of  Personality  and  of  the  Idea  of  the  Ego. 

1.  Diminution  and  Exaggeration  of  the  Idea  of  the  Ego. 

Egoism  and  Morbid  Timidity. 

2.  Optimism.     Ideas  of  Grandeur. 

3.  Ideas  of  Denial  or  Partial  or  Total  Change  of  the  Ego. 

4.  Ideas  of  Persecution  and  Defense. 

5.  Disturbances  of  the  Idea  of  Personality. 

8.  Disturbances  of  the  Social  Psychism. 

1.  Disturbances  of  Social  and  Moral  Ideas. 

2.  Disturbance  of  Religious  Ideas. 

3.  Gregarious  Disturbances. 

9.  Disturbances  of  Sexual  and  Family  Psychism. 

1.  Disturbance  of  Psychic  Acts  Relative  to  Sexual  Life. 

a.  Hypo  Disturbances.    Hypophilism,  Anaphrodisia, 

Sexual  Horror. 
3.  Para  Disturbances. 

a  Sexual  Hyperesthesia,     Precocity  and  Morbid 
Permance  of  the  Sexual  Instincts.    Erotic 
Ideas. 
/?  Sexual  Perversions.     Paraphilism. 
y  Sexual  Inversion. 

2.  Disturbances  of  Psychic  Acts  Relative  to  Family  Life. 

B.  Diseases  in  which  Semi-insanity  may  be  Observed. 
Systematic  Classification  of  Psychopathies. 

1.  Mania.     Systematized  Postmaniacal  Delusions. 

2.  Melancholia. 

1.  Systematized  Postmelancholic  Delusions. 

2.  Questioning  Melancholia. 

3.  Mental  Confusion. 

4.  Progressive  Systematized  Psychoses. 

5.  Disequilibration.     Superior  Degenerates. 

1.  The  Unbalanced. 

2.  Originals  and  Eccentrics. 

6.  Degeneracies,  properly  so-called.     Lesser  Degenerates. 

1.  Simple  Degeneracy. 

2.  Psychoses  of  Degenerates. 

a.  Reasoning  Systematized  Delusions,  or  the  Persecu- 
ted-Persecutors. 

[78] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

a  The  Persecuted. 
/?  Ambitious  and  Inventors, 
y  Litigants. 
6  Erotic  and  Jealous. 
E  Mystic  and  Political. 
5.  Reasoning  Psychosis.     Moral  Insanity.     Perverts. 

7.  Inferior  Degenerates.     Monstrosities.     Imbeciles. 

8.  Epilepsy.     Mental  Condition  of  Epileptics. 

9.  Hysteria. 

1.  Mental  State  in  Hysteria. 

2.  Subconscious  Fixt  Ideas  or  Polygonal*. 

3.  Dream  Hallucinations  or  Polygonals. 

10.  Neurasthenia  and  Psychasthenia. 
Conclusions. 

IN  a  book  such  as  the  present,  this  chapter 
would  not  necessarily  need  to  take  the  same 
predominant  place  that  it  would  have  to  take  if  I 
were  writing  exclusively  for  physicians ;  but  it  never- 
theless holds  the  chief  place  of  importance  because 
it  is  the  pivot  and  the  condition  of  all  the  others. 

The  existence  or  the  non-existence  of  the  semi- 
insane  is  a  medical  question.  Clinical  experience 
alone  can  solve  it.  It  is  the  clinical  proof  of  this 
existence  that  I  am  going  to  gather  here  from  the 
classics.  I  shall  divide  this  exposition  into  two 
parts:  i.  The  semi-insane  according  to  Trelat.  2. 
The  semi-insane  according  to  clinical  medicine  of 
the  present  day. 

I.  THE   SEMI-INSANE   ACCORDING  TO   TR£LAT 

The  medical  study  of  the  semi-insane  made  its 
first  real  appearance  in  1861,  with  the  excellent 

[79] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

work  of  Trelat*  on  reasoning  mania,  in  which  we 
find  the  most  helpful  clinical  descriptions  of 
these  patients. 

"  This  work,"  says  Trelat,  "  is  entirely  devoted 
to  the  examination  and  the  study  of  the  semi- 
insane.  .  .  .  These  patients  are  insane,  but  they  do 
not  appear  so  because  they  can  express  themselves 
lucidly.  They  are  insane  in  their  actions  rather 
than  in  their  words.  Their  powers  of  attention 
are  sufficient  to  allow  nothing  of  what  passes 
around  them  to  escape  them ;  to  let  nothing  that 
they  hear  go  unanswered,  often  to  succeed  per- 
fectly in  the  accomplishment  of  a  project.  They 
are  lucid  even  in  their  delusional  ideas.  Their 
madness  is  lucid.  .  .  .  The  object  of  this  work  in- 
cludes the  pointing  out  and  recognizing  as  diseased 
more  than  one  mind  which  has  hitherto  been  re- 
garded as  sane." 

Pinel  had  already  spoken  of  these  patients,  who, 
while  showing  signs  of  mental  derangement, 
"make  replies  which  are  perfectly  correct  and 
exact,  and  read  and  write  as  if  their  comprehen- 
vsion  were  perfectly  normal." 

A  patient  of  Esquirol's  "speaks  at  the  first 
meeting  against  her  husband,  accuses  him  of  a 
thousand  faults  which  he  does  not  possess.      She 

'Trdlat:   "La  Folic  Lucide  £tudi^e  et  Considdrde  au  Point  de 
Vue  de  la  Famille  et  de  la  Soci^te,"  1861. 

[80] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

is  inconsiderate  in  her  conversation  and  reveals 
secrets  which  a  woman  generally  keeps  hidden; 
imprudent  in  her  behavior,  she  exposes  herself  to 
natural  suspicions.  If  her  husband  or  her  relatives 
want  her  to  be  careful  of  appearances,  she  is  angry 
and  pretends  that  she  is  a  victim  of  calumny. 
She  tells  this  person  and  that  a  thousand  fabrica- 
tions, trying  to  spread  discontent,  misunderstand- 
ing, and  disorder.  It  seems  as  if  a  demon  of  evil 
prompted  her  words  and  her  actions.  If  she  is 
out  in  society,  she  behaves  herself  with  so  much 
care  that  those  who  have  been  the  most  fore- 
warned change  their  minds  about  her.  She  takes 
part  in  conversation,  says  pleasant  things  and  lit- 
tle flatteries  to  the  very  people  of  whom  she  had 
spoken  evil  the  night  before  or  on  that  very 
morning." 

It  is  such  patients  as  these,  says  Guislain,  "who 
are  able  to  disarm  the  most  solid  logicians.  Their 
conversation  at  times  is  as  witty  as  any  that  you 
could  find.  I  recall  a  lady  who  was  a  perfect  nui- 
sance to  me,  as  well  as  to  everybody  else  in  the 
establishment.  Every  time  that  she  took  part  in 
the  conversation  I  had  to  struggle  against  her 
vivacious  assaults.  All  my  replies  were  submitted 
to  an  analytical  test  and  with  such  profundity  of 
insight  that  everybody  was  astonished." 

Trelat  concludes  this  general  review  by  saying 
6  [8i] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

that  the  semi-insane  "  are  the  insane  concerning 
whom  there  is  the  most  debate  by  people  in  gen- 
eral. .  .  .  No  one  can  say  just  how  far  these  lucid 
insane  people  can  keep  control  over  themselves. 
Certain  among  them  can  hold  themselves  in  and  let 
no  one  know  of  their  'delusional  ideas'  for  sev- 
eral months,  perhaps  six  months,  perhaps  a  year, 
until  one  day  when,  despairing  of  overcoming  the 
resistance  which  restrains  them,  their  secret  es- 
capes them  all  at  once,  in  a  moment  of  pride  or  of 
anger." 

Entering  then  into  the  details  of  clinical  de- 
scription, Trelat  adopts  a  classification  that  has  no 
scientific  *  pretensions,  but  is  rather  a  clinical  no- 
menclature. 

I  will  say  a  word  concerning  each  one  of  his 
types. 

I.  Imbeciles  and  Feeble-minded 

"  Among  the  imbeciles  there  are  some  who  have 
a  very  good  memory  and  sufficient  relative  apti- 
tude to  learn  and  to  know  a  good  many  things 
.  .  .  without  being  able,  for  all  that,  to  look  out  for 
themselves.  There  are  some  who  know  how  to 
read  and  write;    there  are  some  who  can  write 

*"  The  important  thing  is  to  make  them  known  (the  lucid  in- 
sane), and  that  is  what  we  are  aiming  at,  rather  than  at  a  rigid  clas- 
sification."   (Trdat,  loc.  cit.,  p.  291.) 

[82] 


CLINICAL   PROOF  OF   EXISTENCE 

music  or  who  speak  two  languages.  .  .  .  Many 
imbeciles  know  only  how  to  follow  copy  in  writing, 
but  nevertheless  can  write  a  very  proper  note  of 
invitation  with  all  the  formalities  and  polite  ex- 
pressions of  social  usage.  They  can  do  well  what- 
ever they  are  accustomed  to  do.  We  have  seen  a 
young  girl  able  to  take  care  of  all  the  rentals  of  a 
fairly  large  house.  A  certain  number  of  young 
people  of  both  sexes,  who  are  perfectly  correct  in 
their  deportment  and  decidedly  elegant  in  their 
clothing,  so  that  they  would  adorn  a  ballroom  and 
would  dance  well,  may  nevertheless  be  so  lacking 
in  intelligence  as  not  to  be  held  responsible  for 
their  actions.  .  .  ." 

2.  Satyriasists  and  Nymphomaniacs 

"...  There  are  some  young  girls  who  are 
completely  void  of  modesty.  ...  A  child,  fifteen 
years  old,  properly  brought  up  by  her  relatives 
during  the  years  that  her  father,  a  widower,  was 
attending  to  his  manufacturing  business,  used  to 
call  out  of  the  window  to  the  soldiers  whom  she 
saw  passing  by.  .  .  .  Another,  .  .  .  twelve  years 
of  age,  used  to  go  out  in  the  evening  under  the 
pretext  of  going  to  the  house  of  some  friends  of 
her  family  and  would  stand  on  the  sidewalk  and 
stop  and  accost  the  passers-by.  She  would  take 
them  to  the  house  of  another  young  girl  whose 

[83] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

acquaintance  she  had  made.  Her  relatives  learned 
of  her  conduct  only  through  the  police,  with  whom 
she  had  no  standing  and  who  made  trouble  for 
her.  .  .  ." 

The  sixteenth  observation  of  Trelat's  deals  with 
a  man  whose  story  seems  to  have  been  used  by 
Michel  Corday.  He  was  an  obscene,  irrationally 
violent,  and  dangerous  man  who  forced  his  wife, 
an  admirably  courageous  and  discreet  woman,  to 
undergo  every  sort  of  physical  and  moral  torture. 
All  the  while  this  same  man  administered  his  af- 
fairs regularly,  collected  his  rents  promptly,  and 
showed  himself  economical  in  his  expenses.  .  .  . 
The  people  in  the  country  around  him  did  not 
consider  him  insane.  They  looked  upon  him  only 
as  an  original  character,  and  that  was  the  term 
which  they  applied  to  him." 

3.  Monomaniacs 

Esquirol,  who  was  the  first  to  study  the  mono- 
maniacs, has  already  used  the  term  "partial  de- 
lusional insanity,"  which  is  preferred  at  the  pres- 
ent time.  "  Patients  afflicted  with  this  form  of 
madness,"  he  says,  "have  really  only  partial 
insanity." 

A  patient  of  Trelat's  "  replied  most  accurately  to 
questions  which  were  put  to  her,  told  a  story  with 
precision,  gave  proof  of  discernment  and  sagacity, 

[84] 


CLINICAL   PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

and  conversed  agreeably.  She  often  showed  kind- 
ness. If  she  was  present  at  an  accident  or  where 
any  one  was  suffering,  she  tried  to  bring  aid  with 
all  haste.  Yet  nevertheless  all  her  activity  was 
devoted  to  the  furtherance  of  her  delusional  ideas. 
She  tormented  herself  and  incessantly  attacked 
those  around  her,"  chiefly  her  husband  and  then 
her  physician. 

Another  patient  wrote  a  series  of  perfectly  cor- 
rect letters,  certain  of  which  were  "  very  remarka- 
ble," indicating  "as  much  vigor  and  as  much 
clearness  in  the  thought  as  depth  of  sentiment," 
sometimes  a  true  "  nobility  of  language  "  and  great 
"  independence."  Nothing  "  seemed  to  indicate  in 
the  slightest  degree  that  her  intelligence  was  af- 
fected. Sometimes  during  most  prolonged  con- 
versations the  most  careful  tests  betrayed  no  sign 
of  her  diseased  condition."  Then,  one  fine  day, 
the  monomaniac  idea  appeared.  She  had  written 
at  the  end  of  a  letter  which  was  a  model  of  cor- 
rectness: "I  am  ...  we  are  rich."  Then  she 
wrote  to  the  Prefect  of  the  Police,  to  the  Prefect  of 
the  Seine,  to  the  Archbishop,  ...  to  the  Minister 
of  the  Interior,  to  the  Minister  of  Finances,  and 
to  the  Emperor.  Her  clear  and  accurate  mind 
was  given  up  to  monomania  for  invention.  She 
had  a  process  to  abolish  the  fraud  of  which  the 
Treasury  was  the  victim.    The  careful  examina- 

[85] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

tion  which  she  had  made  of  the  sand  brought  to 
the  Salpetriere,  the  petrifactions  and  numerous 
bits  of  charcoal  which  she  found  in  it,  proved  to 
her  that  there  existed  in  Paris  a  petrifying  spring, 
and  somewhere  in  the  suburbs  a  coal-mine  whose 
bed  should  be  found  considerably  lower.  (Letters 
to  the  Prefect  of  the  Seine  and  to  the  Minister  of 
the  Interior.) 

At  the  same  time  she  wrote  to  the  Archbishop, 
to  the  Minister  of  the  Interior,  and  to  the  Em- 
peror, setting  forth  a  new  universal  system.  She 
had  found  the  explanation  of  Denderah  and  the 
Mariner's  Compass  and  the  greater  part  of  all  nat- 
ural phenomena. 

To  the  same  group  also  belong  the  monomaniac 
inventors  who  are  not  irrational,  but  who  always 
ruin  themselves. 

A  man  had  ruined  his  family  by  his  experiments 
and  inventions.  He  had  found  the  way  to  make 
a  wheel  turn  perpetually  without  motor-power. 
He  was  taken  to  the  Observatory,  where  Arago 
and  Humboldt  politely  discust  his  ideas  and 
concluded:  "There  is  no  movement,  sir,  without 
motor-power.  ...  I  assure  you  that  you  are  mis- 
taken." The  patient  burst  into  tears.  Thirty 
feet  from  the  Observatory  he  stamped  on  the 
ground  and  exclaimed:  "All  the  same,  Monsieur 
Arago  is  mistaken.  I  have  no  need  of  his  motor- 
""  [86] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

power.     My  wheel  will  turn  all  by  itself  for  me. 
It  would  turn  in  stagnant  water." 

A  very  skilful  worker,  an  optician,  was  earning 
eight  to  ten  francs  per  day  and  was  able  to  keep 
his  family  in  comfort  by  his  work.  But  he  got  the 
idea  one  day  of  making  a  "sublime  invention;  .  .  . 
he  would  unify  in  one  process  the  entire  work  of 
photography.  .  .  .  His  process  was  so  simple,  so 
satisfactory,  and  so  superior  to  all  others.  .  .  . 
While  waiting  for  it  to  materialize,  his  entire  fam- 
ily was  plunged  into  discomfort  and  even  into 
misery.  All  his  furniture  and  all  his  possessions 
had  been  sold  or  pawned." 

4.  Erotomaniacs 

Differing  altogether  from  the  satyrs  and  nym- 
phomaniacs,^ "  the  erotomaniacs  are  lovers  who  are 
tormented  by  what  is  usually  a  single  passion ;  we 
say  usually,  because  we  have  seen  one  of  these  mon- 
omaniacs who  loved  two  sisters  with  equal  love  at 
the  same  time.  He  loved  both  of  them  too  much 
to  think  of  marrying  either  of  them ;  but  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  bear  the  thought  that  either 
one  of  the  two  should  belong  to  another  man." 
He  committed    suicide  on  learning  of  the   ap- 

'The  mystics  are  apt  to  be  erotomaniacs  rather  than  nympho- 
maniacs. See  Georges  Dumas  :  "  Comment  aiment  les  Mystiques 
Chretiens,"  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  September  15,  1906. 

[87] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

preaching  marriage  of  one  of  the  two,  and  no  one 
had  discovered  his  semi-insanity  until  that  time. 

"Like  all  monomaniacs,"  says  Esquirol,  "the 
erotomaniacs  are  eternally  pursued  by  the  same 
ideas,  and  by  the  same  affections  which  become 
much  more  disordered  when  they  are  concen- 
trated or  exasperated  by  contradictions.  Fear, 
hope,  jealousy,  joy  seem  to  unite  all  at  the  same 
time,  or  turn  about  to  make  the  torment  of  these 
unfortunate  creatures  more  cruel.  They  neglect 
and  leave  and  even  flee  from  their  relatives  and 
friends ;  they  despise  fortune,  have  a  contempt  for 
social  appearances,  and  are  capable  of  the  most  ex- 
traordinary, the  most  difficult,  the  most  reprehen- 
sible, and  the  most  peculiar  actions." 

Altho  differing  from  one  another,  erotomania 
on  the  one  hand,  and  satyriasis  and  nymphomania 
on  the  other,  may  be  mingled  or  may  succeed 
one  another  in  the  same  patient.  (Observation 
XXXIII.  of  Trelat.) 

5.  Jealous  Patients 

This  kind  of  semi-insane  man  "  becomes  inca- 
pable of  continuing  his  work,  and  perpetually  wear; 
ies  his  family  by  his  complaints  and  reproaches 
and  expressions  of  despair.  There  is  no  more 
rest    for  him  or  for  any  one   around   him;    no 

more  domestic  regulations;    no  hours  for  meals 

[SS] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

or  for  sleep.  If  he  is  a  man  he  abuses  his  au- 
thority in  order  to  make  ever^-body  suffer.  He 
torments,  he  threatens,  he  commits  outrage,  he 
persecutes,  he  strikes,  he  slays,  he  wounds,  some- 
times he  kills.  If  it  is  a  woman,  she  weeps,  she 
cries,  she  gives  way  to  violence,  to  lassitude  and 
disgust.  .  .  .  Men  or  women,  they  neither  enjoy 
nor  let  any  one  else  enjoy  any  tranquillity.  They 
take  everything  in  the  wrong  way ;  twist  all  facts, 
accuse  people  of  wrong  intentions,  compromise 
the  absent,  and  end  up,  by  virtue  of  their  quarrel- 
ing, by  becoming  odious." 

?  There  are  even  some  "  mothers  who  are  jealous 
of  their  daughters  and  capable  of  letting  them- 
selves be  carried  away  by  their  passion  to  the  most 
terrible  extremities." 

6.  Dipsomaniacs 

Very  different  from  drunkards, "  who  become 
intoxicated  whenever  they  happen  to  take  a  drink," 
"  the  dipsomaniacs  are  people  suffering  from  a  dis- 
ease which  makes  them  drink  whenever  one  of 
their  attacks  comes  on." 

"An  officer  of  the  Hussars  was  a  brilliant  officer 
in  the  morning  and  all  day  long  he  would  be  brave 
in  battle,  able  and  amiable  in  conversation,  and  in 
everyway  charming  all  through  the  first  part  of  a 
dinner,  .  .  .  but  he  could  never  remember  the  end 

[89] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

of  the  meal.  His  attendant  would  carry  him  out 
every  evening  and  put  him  to  bed  dead  drunk. 
The  advice  of  his  friends  and  the  authority  of  his 
chief  were  of  no  avail.  His  service  was  beyond 
reproach,  but  all  his  evenings  seemed  to  be  irrev- 
ocably devoted  to  the  most  unrestrained  intem- 
perance." A  young  man  had  been  accepted  as  a 
fiance  in  a  very  good  family.  He  was  witty,  bril- 
liant, and  charming  to  every  one.  Nevertheless, 
at  the  same  time  he  had  "  already  sunk  so  low  as 
to  enter  wine-shops  and  saloons  and  drink  at  the 
proprietor's  expense." 

7.  Spendthrift  and  Adventurous   Characters 

"  A  Belgian,  having  only  30,000  francs,  which  he 
could  have  made  to  bear  good  interest  by  work, 
set  up  a  four-in-hand  and  drove  it  until  he  did  not 
have  a  penny  left." 

Adventurous  and  spendthrift  characters  are  also 
demoralizing.  Their  presence  is  often  accompa- 
nied by  evil  consequences  to  those  around  them, 
not  only  from  the  money  point  of  view,  but  still 
more  from  their  effect  on  good  habits  and  upright- 
ness. 

8.  The  Conceited  or  Boastful 

Nothing  will  stop  these  patients.  "  Nothing 
makes  them  afraid,  nothing  has  any  effect  upon 

[90] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

them.  .  .  .  They  listen  to  nothing  and  they  feel 
nothing;  they  have  no  respect  either  for  strength 
or  weakness,  for  old  age  or  infancy.  ...  As  heads 
of  a  family  they  are  far  from  feeling  the  responsi- 
bility of  their  position,  and  they  compromise  the 
interests  of  everybody  else  without  consulting  any 
one.  They  ruin  their  wives  and  children,  and  pre- 
tend, after  the  proof  which  has  condemned  them, 
to  keep  up  the  same  authority  and  the  same 
power.  They  have  a  will  of  iron;  nobody 
around  them  can  have  sufficient  firmness  to  resist 
them." 

One  man  had  "  lordly  Ideas  which  showed  them- 
selves in  all  the  details  of  his  daily  life.  He  al- 
ways ordered  from  his  tailor  ten  pairs  of  winter 
trousers,  twenty  pairs  of  summer  trousers,  and  as 
many  vests  at  the  same  time.  He  had  thirty  pairs 
of  spectacles,  and,  through  some  singular  whim, 
when  he  went  to  bed  he  would  put  those  that  he 
had  on  his  nose  under  his  bed  where  most  people 
would  put  their  slippers.  .  .  .  He  believed  himself 
to  be  occupying  the  highest  position  by  helping 
authors  to  publish  their  books,  and  establishing 
journals  and  forming  commercial  societies.  There- 
fore, he  was  continually  in  demand  by  people  who 
were  in  need  of  money." 

Mile.  R was  a  "  monomaniac  simply  puffed 

up  with  pride,  taking  the  name  of  Golden  Star 

[91] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

and  connecting  with  it  the  idea  that  it  had  a  super- 
natural influence  upon  her  destiny." 

In  another  proud,  conceited  patient,  her  lan- 
guage was,  however,  never  coarse  and  never  low ; 
it  was  nearly  always  correct,  often  spiteful,  and 
sometimes  very  clever.  She  knew  all  of  the  witty 
sayings  of  Moliere  concerning  physicians,  and 
even  those  of  Beaumarchais ;  but  she  used  to  add 
her  own  witticisms  to  them,  and  was  not  always 
much  below  her  models. 

"These  patients  care  for  nobody;  they  are  in- 
capable of  gratitude,  of  devotion,  or  real  regret. 
They  have  only  one  thought  and  one  motive — 
their  own  personality  and  pride.  They  like  to 
have  other  people  suffer  for  them,  deprive  them- 
selves for  them,  and  sacrifice  at  any  cost  their 
sleep,  their  appetite,  their  work,  their  affections, 
and  even  their  life." 

9.  Evil-doers 

I  will  simply  indicate  here  this  group,  which  will 
be  better  placed  in  the  fifth  chapter  (the  harmful 
semi-insane ;  the  misdemeanors  of  the  semi-insane). 
I  will  only  give  an  instance  of  a  certain  patient 
who,  between  her  attacks,  was  lucid  enough  to  go 
to  M.  de  Villele,  the  Minister  of  Finance,  and  un- 
fold to  him  the  plan  of  a  financial  journal  and 
work  him  up  to  such  a  point  of  enthusiasm  "  that 

[92] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

the  Minister  promised  her  everything  that  she 
wanted,  talked  all  evening  of  the  communication 
which  he  had  received,  and  consented  to  give  it 
up  only  when  they  proved  to  him  that  it  was 
nothing  but  a  crazy  woman's  project." 

10.  Kleptomaniacs 

These  are  sick  people  "  who  are  driven  in  spite 
of  themselves  to  take  what  does  not  belong  to 
them,"  just  as  we  have  seen  that  the  dipsomaniacs 
are  driven  by  an  irresistible  power  to  drink. 

Imbeciles  "show  great  skill  and  employ  many 
clever  ruses  in  their  thefts— either  to  bring  them 
about,  or  to  turn  suspicion  from  themselves  and 
cast  it  upon  others." 

"An  Irishman  of  noble  family,  who  had  been 
very  rich  and  who  was  still  comfortably  off,  for  a 
long  time  was  accustomed  every  day  to  take  1^/- 
//(£7;2j"  ^^ /z/jr*?  from  the  library  to  sell  them.  .  .  .  He 
had  succeeded  in  taking  as  many  as  fifteen  vol- 
umes in  a  day.  .  .  .  He  had  been  able  to  inspire 
the  greatest  confidence  in  the  booksellers  whose 
shops  he  frequented." 

A  young  Kalmuck  observed  by  Bergmann  "  had 
fallen  into  a  state  of  deep  melancholy  because  his 
confessor  had  forbidden  him  to  steal.  As  he  was 
very  miserable,  they  granted  him  a  certain  indul- 
gence, but  on  condition  that  he  should  return  the 

[93] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

stolen  objects.  He  stole  the  watch  of  his  confes- 
sor during  mass  and  gave  it  back  to  him  after  the 
ceremony.  .  .  .  In  the  town  of  Geseke,"  continued 
Dr.  Bergmann,  "  there  was  an  epileptic  who  was 
like  a  magpie,  stealing  everything  that  he  could 
lay  his  hands  on,  and  hiding  what  he  had  stolen." 

II.  Suicides 

Esqulrol  relates  a  story  by  Rush  (the  first 
American  alienist),  of  twin  brothers,  C.  L.  and  J. 
L.,  who  lived  two  miles  from  each  other.  Cap- 
tain J.  L.,  returning  from  the  legislature  in  Ver- 
mont, blew  his  brains  out  with  a  pistol ;  he  had 
been  sad  and  morose  for  several  days  before. 
About  the  same  time  Captain  C.  L.  became  melan- 
choly and  spoke  of  suicide.  A  few  days  after,  he 
got  up  early  in  the  morning  and  proposed  to  his 
wife  to  go  horseback-riding.  He  shaved  himself; 
and  then  went  into  the  next  room  and  cut  his 
throat. 

Of  the  seven  sons  of  M.  G ,  no  one  of  them 

had  had  any  reversals  of  fortune ;  on  the  contrary, 
some  of  them  had  added  to  their  patrimony;  all 
enjoyed  apparent  good  health  and  honorable  ex- 
istence and  much  esteem.  The  seven  brothers 
all  committed  suicide  during  a  period  of  thirty  or 
forty  years. 

Trelat  concludes  this  chapter,  which  contains 

[94] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

many  facts  like  these,  with  the  words :  "  The  sui- 
cides, both  men  and  women,  whose  history  we 
have  sketched,  were  perfectly  lucid." 

12.  The  Inert 

This  paragraph  in  Trelat's  work  is  of  slight  im- 
portance. We  find  these  patients  much  better 
studied  in  modern  times. 

13.  Patients  with  Lucid  Mania 

"  These  are  patients  who,  altho  they  have  ver>' 
characteristic  attacks  of  maniacal  excitement, 
nevertheless  can  keep  themselves  sufficiently  in 
control,  so  that  up  to  a  certain  point  they  can  ward 
off  their  attacks.  The  condition  of  the  greater 
majority  of  these  is  for  a  long  time  unknown  to  the 
world  at  large.  They  are  always  lucid  even  in  their 
attacks,  and  the  attacks  take  place,  as  a  rule,  only 
in  the  family  circle.  Those  who  see  them  at  home 
or  elsewhere  would  take  them  to  be  reasonable 
people  even  for  years.  These  patients  can  go  out 
every  day,  make  and  receive  innumerable  visits, 
travel,  give  and  take  courtesies,  win  success,  form 
intimate  but  not  permanent  friendships  or  connec- 
tions. .  .  .  Their  maniacal  outbursts  have  some 
analogy  to  attacks  of  rage  and  often  appear,  as  do 
these  attacks,  to  have  an  accidental  cause." 

[95] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Trelat  says  finally  in  his  general  conclusions : 
"  These  patients  with  lucid  mania,  our  semi- 
insane,  have,  on  superficial  examination,  every  ap- 
pearance of  reason ;  they  can  acquire  more  or  less 
authority  over  people  whom  they  only  see  occa- 
sionally ;  they  can  create  partizanship  and  stir  up 
and  encourage  discord  and  division  in  their  rela- 
tions to  people  and  even  in  their  own  family. 

"Whatever  may  be  their  infinite  variety  and 
their  dissimilar  characteristics,  they  are  united 
under  two  common  traits,  two  pathognomonic 
signs,  which  are  hardly  ever  lacking  in  such  insane 
people:  i.  One  can  never  find  any  signs  of  grati- 
tude among  them.  ...  2.  They  will  not  listen  to 
any  representations,  nor  follow  any  advice,  nor  in 
any  way  modify  their  determination." 

I  have  not  hesitated  to  dwell  at  some  length  on 
the  analysis  of  Trelat 's  book,  because  it  seems  to 
me  to  establish  in  a  very  definite  way  the  clinical 
basis  of  the  scientific  description  of  the  semi- 
insane. 

Contemporary  writers  have  completed  and  ex- 
tended this  analysis.  They  have  modified  the 
general  conception  around  which  the  facts  are 
gathered ;  but  the  facts  themselves  so  accurately 
observed  by  Trelat  remain  of  indisputable  docu- 
mentary value. 


r  Q--'  ] 


CLINICAL  PROOF   OF  EXISTENCE 

II.  THE   SEMI-INSANE    ACCORDING    TO    PRESENT- 
DAY   CLINICAL  NEUROLOGY' 

The  clinical  study  of  semi-insanity  may  be  di- 
vided into  three  distinct  groups  of  facts: 

1.  There  are  symptoms  of  semi-insanity  in  cer- 
tain insane  people  shut  up  in  asylums.  One  often 
observes  partial  delusional  states.  So  far  as  the 
rest  of  their  psychic  activity  is  concerned,  these 
patients  are  only  semi-insane.  Ever^'body  knows 
insane  people  with  whom  one  may  talk  for  a  long 
time  without  noticing  anything  out  of  the  way, 
other  than  a  certain  queerness  or  slight  degree  of 
eccentricity,  up  to  a  time  when  they  are  led  to  say 
that  they  are  emperors  of  the  wilderness  or  mar- 
tyrs living  in  huts.' 

2.  The  insane  who  are  cured  for  a  time  and  who 
leave  the  asylums  are  always  threatened  with  the 
dread  of  a  relapse  of  their  disease  and  are  very 

*  See  especially,  for  this  whole  paragraph,  Rdgis  :  "Precis  de 
Psychiatric,"  Nouvelle  Biblioth^que  de  I'fitudiant  en  M^decine, 
3d  edit.,  1906;  and  Gilbert  Pallet:  "Traitd  de  Pathologie  Men- 
tale,"  1903.  All  the  quotations  of  this  chapter  that  are  not  other- 
wise indicated  belong  to  the  work  of  Rdgis. 

'From  various  sources  there  have  been  recently  published  some 
curious  documents  on  "  Le  Musde  de  la  Folie"  (Marie)  and  on 
"  Les  ficrits  et  les  Dessins  des  Maladies  Nerveuses  et  I^Ientales  " 
(Rogues  de  Fursac).  It  appears  in  these  works  that  the  artistic 
productions  of  the  insane  are,  for  the  most  part,  of  such  a  nature 
and  such  quality  as  to  astonish  the  visitor.  One  sees  in  our  yearly 
exhibitions,  says  Marie,  works  which  are  much  more  odd  and 
eccentric. 

7  [97] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

often  semi-insane  during  these  interpolated  periods 
of  comparative  health. 

3.  The  most  important  of  the  three  groups  is 
undoubtedly  that  of  the  semi-insane  who  are  never 
wholly  insane;  who  have  never  had  even  for  a 
short  time  true  attacks  of  madness,  or  real  periods 
of  irresponsibility;  who  remain  semi-insane,  or 
nearly  so,  all  their  lives. 

Moreover,  like  the  group  of  the  insane  them- 
selves, the  group  of  the  semi-insane  is  formed  of  a 
great  number  of  different  and  sometimes  some- 
what incongruous  elements. 

In  order  to  present  this  study  in  detail,  I  shall 
first  analyze  the  symptoms  observed  in  the  semi- 
insane;  I  will  then  review  the  diseases  in  which 
semi-insanity  appears. 

A.  Symptoms  Observed  in  the  Semi-insane 

These  symptoms  are  naturally  the  same  as  those 
seen  in  the  insane.  They  can  be  distinguished 
in  the  semi-insane  only  by  their  greater  limita- 
tions and  a  lesser  degree  of  depth,  intensity,  dura- 
tion, and  sometimes  a  lesser  tenacity. 

To  describe  them,  therefore,  I  shall  recall  first 
of  all  the  classification  which  I  have  arranged  *  for 


*  Plan  of  a  clinical  physiopathology  of  the  psychic  centers, 
Montpellier  Mddical,  t.  xix. ,  1904,  and  "  Le  Psychispie  Inf^ri- 
eur,"  1906,  p.  160. 

[9S] 


CLINICAL   PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 


the  study  of  psychic  phenomena  and  which  can 
be  summed  up  in  the  following  table : 

Classification  of  Functions  and  Psychic  Acts 
IN  General 


'  A.  Psychic  acts  of  recep- 
tion and  representa- 
tion. 


PU 


o 


\l. 


Acts  of  reflection  and  j 
intellectual  elabora-  \ 
tion.  I 


Acts   of  volition  and 
expression. 


•^  < 


Acts  relative 
to  the  pres- 
e  rv  a  t i  on 
and  devel- 
opment of 
life. 


Indi- 
vidual. 


Social. 


Of  the 
species. 


Sensation  and  emotion. 
Perception   and  forma- 
tion of  ideas. 

Attention. 

Memory. 

Association  of  ideas  and 

images. 
Imagination. 
Comparison.  Judgment. 

Reasoning. 

Will.     Decision. 

Externalization  of  deci- 
sion. Passage  to  mo- 
tor action. 

Perceptions. 

Ideas. 

Volitions. 

Psychic  social  acts;  of 

man  in  society. 
Psychic  collective  acts; 

of  societies  of  men. 

Psychic  acts  relative  to 

sexual  life. 
Psychic  acts  relative  to 

family  life. 


In  the  pathological  disturbances  corresponding 
to  each  of  these  groups  I  shall  take  up  in  order: 
I.  Illusions  and  Hallucinations;  2.  Obsessions; 
3.  Delusions;  4.  Impulsions;  5.  Aboulias  and 
Paraboulias ;  6.  Disturbances  of  General  Sensibil- 
ity; 7.  Disturbances  of  the  Idea  of  the  Ego  and 
of  Personality ;  8.  Disturbances  of  the  Social  Psy- 
chism ;  and  9.  Disturbances  of  the  Sexual  and 
Family  Psychism. 

[99] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

The  study  of  these  symptoms  in  the  semi-insane 
will  certainly  not  exhaust  the  subject,  but  will,  I 
trust,  give  a  sufficiently  clear  idea  of  it. 

I.  Illusions  and  Hallucinations 

An  illusion  may  be  defined  as  an  inaccurate 
perception  that  is  believed  to  be  accurate  by  the 
subject;  this  latter  condition  is  necessary  in  order 
that  the  phenomenon  shall  be  really  pathological. 
The  illusion  of  a  stick  that  looks  bent  in  the  water 
would  be  pathological  only  if  one  believed  in  the 
reality  of  the  bend. 

Hallucinations  are  most  often  placed  among 
disturbances  of  perception  (Seglas,  for  example). 
Certainly  there  is  a  phenomenon  of  perception  in 
a  hallucination ;  there  is  a  perception  of  a  sensa- 
tion without  a  real  external  object.  But  there  is 
also  a  phenomenon  of  imagination  which  is  the 
cause  and  the  starting-point  of  the  perception ;  and 
this  is  the  initial  phenomenon.  The  characteristic 
element  of  a  hallucination  is  the  appearance  to 
conscious  perception  of  an  image  of  whose  origin 
the  O  is  ignorant,  which  is  unconsciously  formed 
in  the  polygon  and  which  has  been  formed  with 
such  vivid  objectivity  that  the  O  believes  in  the 
real  external  existence  of  this  object  of  its  inner 
perception.  But  at  the  same  time  this  implies 
a  very  weak  order  of  intelligence  in  perceiving. 

[loo] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

There  is  therefore  always  an  element  oi  false  judg- 
ment in  a  hallucination. 

It  is,  however,  not  necessary  to  identify  hallu- 
cinations and  false  judgments;  there  is  between 
these  two  psychic  disturbances  the  same  difference 
as  between  perception  and  judgment. 

Illusions  and  hallucinations  are  noticed  in  the 
semi-insaiie  to  have  a  characteristic  limitation  or 
slight  duration  which  permits  the  relative  integrity 
of  a  large  part  of  the  superior  psychism.  Like 
the  insane,  the  semi-insane  may  have  false  visual 
or  auditory  sensations;  both  believe  them  to  be 
true ;  but,  in  spite  of  that,  the  semi-insane  man  not 
lacking  in  reason  in  any  other  part  of  his  psychic 
domain,  his  error  is  partial,  or,  rather,  it  is  short  in 
duration  and  has  not  time  to  distort  the  entire 
O  center  of  the  subject. 

An  illusion  is,  moreover,  less  serious  than  an 
hallucination  and  may  consequently  be  more  easily 
obser\'ed  in  semi-insanity.  Many  of  these  neurotic 
persons  hear  a  musical  air  in  the  hoof-beats  of  a 
horse  or  interpret  the  ordinary  buzzing  sounds 
often  heard  in  the  cars  as  systematized  and  signifi- 
cant noises ;  others  have  what  Regis  calls  ciiiemat- 
ographic  hallucinations;  hallucinations  of  sight 
which  appear  at  night  with  rapidly  changing  move- 
ments; many  smell  false  odors  which  are  some- 
times "agreeable  but  nearly  always  distressing— 

[lOl] 


LIBRARY 
^^  SANIA  BARBARA 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

arsenic,  copper,  sulfur,  ammonia,  rotten  eggs, 
burning,  smoke,  of  corpses,  etc."  ;  others  have  false 
sensations  in  the  skin  which  they  refer,  as  the  case 
may  be,  to  manual  contact,  to  electrizations,  to 
spiders,  or  lice,  or  worms. 

2.  Obsessions* 

In  obsessions  there  is  above  all,  at  first  sight,  an 
intellectual  and  emotional  disturbance.  Writers, 
as  a  rule,  only  discuss  the  question  as  to  which  is 
the  principal  and  the  more  important  of  these  two 
elements. 

There  is,  in  fact,  in  obsessions,  first  ajixt  idea, 
which  may  be  spontaneous  or  provoked,  and  often 
delusional,  and,  according  to  Westphal,  an  'obses- 
sion is  chiefly  an  intellectual  disturbance  of  which 
the  ideative  element  is  the  principal  symptom." 

There  is  then  an  emotion ;  according  to  Morel 
and  Regis,  an  obsession  is  "  a  pathological  condi- 
tion which  is  in  the  main  emotional." 

I  hold  that  a  fixt  idea  and  an  emotion  are  not 
enough  to  form  an  obsession.     It  is  necessary  that 

*  See,  again,  Pitres  et  R^gis  :  "  Les  Obsessions  et  les  Impulsions," 
Bibliotheque  Internationale  de  Psychologie  Expdrimentale,  Nor- 
male  et  Pathologique,  1902.  See  also  in  Province  Mddicale  (1906, 
p.  206),  the  work  of  G.  Maurice  (Clinical  Remarks  on  Anxiety, 
Phobia,  and  Obsessions),  a  work  in  which  the  author  is  willing  to 
use  my  classification  as  a  guide  to  analyze  the  pathogeny  of  obses- 
sion and  especially  the  obsession  of  an  automatically  recurring 
rhythm  (obsessions  of  habit). 

[  102  ] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

these  two  elements  should  act  upon  the  will  or  at 
least  should  affect  the  deliberation  and  judgment 
of  the  motives  which  precede  the  decision.  What 
really  characterizes  an  obsession  Is  the  disturbance 
of  the  function  of  the  hierarchization  of  motives ; 
the  fixt  idea  exerts  a  sway  over  the  will  of  the 
subject  that  is  unjust,  unwarranted,  uncoercible, 
irresistible,  out  of  all  proportion,  and  crazy.  It  is 
then,  and  only  then,  that  it  constitutes  an  obses- 
sion. This  is  what  has  made  me  classify  obses- 
sions among  the  disturbances  of  the  will. 

This  is  the  opinion  formulated  by  Arnaud.^ 
"  An  obsession,"  says  he,  "  is  first  and  foremost  a 
disease  of  the  will." ' 

Besides  everybody  now  agrees,  as  a  result  of 
clinical  analysis,  that  there  is  as  a  basis  of  an  obses- 
sion and  as  an  indispensable,  fundamental  element 
of  it,  a  special  condition,  independent  of  the  fixt 
idea  and  the  emotion,  and  anterior  to  both  of  these. 
Referring  it  to  its  cause,  Magnan  calls  it  a  ground 
work  of  disequilibration  and  degeneracy;  others 
call  it  a  rudimentary  paranoia.  Pitres  and  Regis 
declare  that  everybody  admits  a  constitutionally 
prepared  predisposition,  which  is  called  by  differ- 

'  See,  for  the  clinical  characteristics  of  obsessions,  Arnaud : 
"Trait^  citd  de  Ballet,"  p.  680  and  following. 

•  Rdgis  also  says  (p.  96) :  "  There  is  no  doubt  that  an  obsession 
is  a  disturbance  not  only  of  tlie  emotions,  but  also  of  the  a////,  and 
Arnaud  is  right  in  insisting  on  this  point." 

[103] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ent  names.  It  is  this  previous  and  unquestionable 
element  which  I  define  a  little  more  psychologically 
by  giving  it  the  name  of  weakness  of  will,  and  more 
especially  as  a  disturbance  of  the  function  of  the 
hierarchization  of  motives. 

I  shall  follow  Regis,  and  divide  obsessions  into 
two  groups,  according  to  whether  "  the  anxiety 
which  is  at  the  bottom  of  it  shows  itself  more  par- 
ticularly as  2i/ear  or  as  an  idea.  The  first  type  is 
a  phobic  obsession  or  phobia.  The  second  obses- 
sion is  ideative,  or  obsession  properly  so-called." 

I.  Phobias.  Morbid  Fears 
A  phobia  is  not  2,  fear;  it  is  a  morbid  {^2,x. 
Fear,  ^  which  must  not  be  confused  either  with 
the  impression  which  causes  it,  nor  with  the  acts 
which  express  it,  nor  even  with  the  physiological 
phenomena  which  accompany  it — and  which  have 
lately  been  very  cleverly  studied^— fear  is  a  normal 
psychic  and  physiological  element.  It  is  neces- 
sary fqr  the  preser\^ation  and  defense  of  life.  It  is 
the  manifestation  of  our  instinctive  repulsion  for 
what  is  hurtful.  It  is  a  psychic  phenomenon  which 

'See  my  article  on  "  La  Peur,  fildment  Psycliique  Normal  de 
Defense,"  Journal  de  Psychologie  Normaleet  Pathologique,  1904, 
p.  265,  apropos  of  a  lecture  of  Dr.  Menard's  on  diseases  of  fear 
and  phobism. 

''See  principally  Mosso :  "La  Peur:  Etude  Psychologique," 
Biblioth^quede  Philosophie  Con  tern  poraine,  trans.  Fdlix  Hdment. 
Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

[104] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

brings  to  our  knowledge  the  presence  of  a  danger- 
ous or  harmful  object,  and  which  gives  birth  to 
the  necessary  acts  of  avoiding  or  combating  this 
hurtful  element.  It  is  a  normal  psychic  element 
of  defense. 

Fear,  even  exaggerated,  remains  physiological 
and  forms  only  an  element  of  temperament  and 
not  a  disease,  so  much  so  that,  however  intense  it 
may  be,  it  remains  logical  and  proportionate  to 
the  impressions  which  caused  it,  and  does  not 
bring  about  abnormal  or  really  morbid  reactions 
(anguish  0. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  morbid  disturbances  m 
fear:  hypophobism  (lack  of  fear^)  and  hyper- ox 
Xdiih^r  par ap/iobism  (phobias). 

I  do  not  insist  upon  the  hypophobic  semi-insane. 
These  are  adventurers,  audacious,  blustering,  and 
bold.  The  hypophobic  symptom  is  very  clear  in 
the  euphoria,  optimism,  self-satisfaction,  and  self- 
confidence  of  such  people. 

The  phobias  play  a  much  more  important  role 
in  the  history  of  semi-insanity. 

'It  is  well  to  distinguish  with  Brissaud  between  the  physical 
phenomenon  of  anguish  and  the  psychic  phenomenon  of  anxiety, 
the  two  elements  not  being  necessarily  and  always  one  and  the 
same. 

'Too  often  fear  is  considered  only  as  a  pathological  phenom- 
enon, or  at  least  it  is  studied  only  pathologically  and  in  its  morbid 
forms;  with  such  a  restricted  idea  it  is  impossible  to  understand 
hypophobic  disturbances. 

[105] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

In  these  cases  the  subject  is  afraid  of  mishaps. 
The  order  of  the  phobias  is  in  no  way  the  logical 
order  of  impressions  dangerous  to  the  organism. 
Even  when  the  nervous  patient  is  afraid  of  every- 
thing, the  emotion  is  not  in  proportion  to  the  ter- 
rifying nature  of  the  object. 

And  further — and  this  is  the  chief  characteristic 
— fear,  in  such  cases,  is  paraiyzmg  and  agonizing. 
Instead  of  being  the  starting-point  of  wise  meas- 
ures of  defense,  the  unconscious  reactions  to  this 
fear  are  inhibitive  and  frantic.  This  fear  makes 
the  subject  perspire,  presses  on  his  chest,  makes 
his  limbs  shake  or  give  way,  or  if  it  makes  him  fly 
from  danger  he  will  fly  foolishly  and  in  the  wrong 
direction.  It  is  in  this  respect  that  such  fear  is 
distinctly  diseased. 

In  all  cases  the  important  fact  to  establish,  to 
study,  and  to  treat  in  these  patients  is  not  the  par- 
ticular phobia  of  one  thing  or  another,  of  a  public 
place,  or  an  enclosed  space,  of  a  great  height,  or 
of  a  railway  train  (the  list  grows  longer  every  day, 
altho  the  blackleg  has  not  entirely  disappeared 
from  the  classical  lore  of  physicians),  the  im- 
portant thing  is  the  psychic  condition  which 
makes  the  fear  false,  and  converts  a  physio- 
logical emotion  into  a  morbid  emotion ;  it  is  not 
the  phobia,  it  is  the  phobism  which  gives  birth 

to  it. 

[io6] 


CLINICAL  PROOF   OF  EXISTENCE 

Regis  distinguishes  diffuse  phobia  from  systema- 
tized phobia. 

In  the  first  type  {panophobid)  there  is,  says 
Ribot,  "  a  condition  where  one  is  afraid  of  every- 
thing and  yet  of  nothing;  where  the  anxiety  in- 
stead of  being  fastened  on  one  object,  which  is  al- 
ways the  same,  floats  as  in  a  dream  and  is  only 
fixt  for  a  moment  by  chance  of  circumstances,  pass- 
ing from  one  object  to  another."  Regis  describes 
the  typical  history  of  a  patient  in  whom  "each 
event,  each  incident,  each  act  of  her  life,  thus  be- 
came a  matter  over  which  to  pour  out  her  anxiety, 
which  would  be  momentarily  specialized  by  what- 
ever happened  to  occur."  This  is  the  symptom  of 
anxious  psychism,  whether  it  deals  with  the  past 
(regrets,  remorse,  scruples)  or  whether  with  the 
future  (indecision,  apprehension). 

As  to  systematized  phobias.  Regis  divides  them 
into: 

1.  Phobias  of  objects  (knives,  pins,  firearms, 
matches,  dust,  dirt,  excrements,  poison,  brass,  iron, 
velvet,  oil,  fruits).^ 

2.  Phobias  of  place  (large  spaces,  narrow  and 
enclosed  spaces,  summits,  precipices,  houses,  thea- 

*It  seems  to  me  useless  to  reproduce  here  the  innumerable 
Greek  words  which  have  been  manufactured,  such  as  belenophobia 
for  pins,  rupophobia  for  dirt,  aichmophobia  for  pointed  objects. 
cremnophobia  for  precipices,  amaxophobia  for  carriages,  and  sider- 
odromophobia for  railways. 

[107] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ter,  churches,  cemeteries,  carriages,  railways) ;  of 
elements  (air,  wind,  water,  rivers,  sea,  fire,  earth, 
storms,  tempests,  thunder,  lightnings,  mountains, 
slopes,  empty  places,  night,  darkness) ;  oi  functioits 
(sleep,  respiration,  swallowing,  blushing,  perspir- 
ing, defecation,  micturition,  standing  up,  walking, 
speech,  writing,  and  signatures);  of  diseases  (gro- 
tesque formation,  syphilis,  spermatorrhea,  epi- 
demics, cancer,  tuberculosis,  rabies,  microbes, 
angina  pectoris,  cardiopathies,  nervous  troubles, 
psychoses),  and  of  death, 

3.  Phobias  of  living  beings  (animals,  dogs,  cats, 
insects,  spiders,  snakes,  rats,  mice,  men,  women, 
crowds). 

2.  Ideative  Obsessions^  or  Obsessions  properly 
so-called 

Here  "anxiety  shows  itself  chiefly  by  an  idea 
and  not  by  a  fear."  Besides,  "  by  a  perfectly  nat- 
ural propensity,  the  monophobia  tends  little  by  lit- 
tle toward  monoideism  "  ;  from  that,  a  great  many 
"  intermediate  cases  where  there  is  a  transition  be- 
tween the  phobia  and  the  obsession." 

"  The  idea  of  the  obsession  is  a  conscious  idea, 
but  involuntary  or  parasitic,  automatic,  discordant 
to  the  regular  line  of  thought,  and  at  last  irresisti- 
ble. .  .  .  The  obsessive  ideas  are  not  as  a  rule 
foolish  or  impossible   ideas;   generally  they  seem 

[108] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

very  real  and  have  nothing  morbid  about  them 
except  their  exaggeration,  their  domination,  or 
their  persistence." 

Regis  classes  the  principal  obsessions  thus:  i. 
The  obsessions  of  doubt,  properly  so-called;  2. 
obsessions  of  scruple;  3.  obsessions  of  a  word, of  a 
number,  or  of  language ;  4.  obsessions  of  sentiment 
and  affection;  5.  nosophobic  obsessions. 

The  obsessed  perform  acts  which  Regis  and 
Ballet  have  carefully  studied  under  the  name  of 
defensive  measures  of  the  obsessed^  and  which  either 
anticipate  attacks  of  obsession  or  seek  to  control 
these  attacks  when  they  break  out,  or  to  diminish 
or  to  hide  the  emotional  effects. 

Thus,  "  those  who  are  obsessed  by  doubt  will  pay 
for  a  thing  twice  when  they  can  not  assure  them- 
selves that  they  are  not  in  debt.  Many  who  have 
the  obsession  of  contamination  wear  gloves  all  the 
time  and  change  them  every  day.  They  are  con- 
tinually concerned  about  their  garments  and  their 
underclothing,  at  night  watching  with  the  greatest 
care  the  garments  that  they  had  folded  exactly  on 
the  back  of  a  chair,  which  was  fastidiously  clean; 
they  are  perpetually  washing  their  hands.  .  .  .  We 
may  cite  in  conclusion  the  more  or  less  frequent 
repetitions  of  actions  by  the  obsessed  who  often 
do  things  over  and  over  again  until  they  are  cer- 
tain that  they  are  perfectly  performed  according  to 

[109] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

their  liking,  or  that  they  may  fit  into  a  favorable 
or  propitious  moment  and  not  to  an  unlucky  one." 

3.  Delusions 

It  is  difficult  as  well  as  useless  to  try  to  define 
delusions ;  everybody  understands  the  meaning  of 
this  word. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  an  obsessive  idea  and 
of  a  fixt  idea,  which  is  often  a  delusional  idea. 
Minor  degrees  of  delusion  may  be  termed  delu- 
sional interpretatio7is .  The  greater  degree  is  spon- 
taneous delusion. 

A  number  of  classifications  of  delusional  ideas 
have  been  suggested. 

Seglas  proposed  the  nine  following  groups :  i. 
Ideas  of  humility  and  culpability  (autoaccusation) 
and  ideas  of  ruin;  2.  ideas  of  persecution ;  3.  ideas 
of  defense,  which  are  in  relation  to  the  preceding; 
4.  ideas  of  grandeur;  5.  hypochondriacal  ideas ;  6. 
ideas  of  negation;  7.  heinous  ideas  (which  Cotard 
places  rather  with  sorrowful  delusions  and  hypo- 
chondriacal ideas);  8.  religious  ideas;  9.  erotic 
ideas. 

Rogues  de  Fursac  unites  Nos.  i,  5,  and  6  under 
the  general  title  of  melancholic  ideas ;  to  these  No. 
7  might  be  added. 

Regis  adopts  the  six  following  groups:  i.  Ideas 
of  satisfaction,  grandeur,  richness,  and  invention; 

[no] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

2.  ideas  of  humility,  despair,  incapacity,  ruin,  in- 
dignity, and  autointoxication ;  3.  hypochondriacal 
ideas  of  negation  and  of  bodily  deformity  and 
heinous  crime;  4.  ideas  of  persecution,  jealousy, 
and  defense;  5.  religious  or  mystic  ideas;  6.  ero- 
tic ideas. 

These  various  forms  of  delusional  ideas  may  be 
met  with  in  the  semi-insane,  with  the  constant 
characteristic  of  their  not  being  very  profound, 
or,  chiefly,  of  being  li?mted. 

And  here  arises  the  question,  which  is  all-im- 
portant to  our  subject,  that  oi  partial  delusion. 

Partial  or  systematized  delusions  (paranoia,  Ver- 
riicktheit)  show  themselves  primarily  by  a  devia- 
tion of  the  intellectual  functions,  but  by  such  a 
deviation  as  would  in  itself  imply  no  real  weakening 
of  the  intelligence  and  which  leaves  untouched,  at 
least  to  all  appearances,  the  logical  reasoning  and 
faculties.  The  delusion  presents  itself  as  a  system 
limited  to  a  series  of  peculiar  ideas ;  the  intellectual 
operations  and  intelligence  taken  as  a~  whole  ap- 
pearing normal.  It  is  in  this  respect  that  partial 
delusions  differ  from  generalized  delusions  (mania 
and  melancholy),  which  latter  from  the  beginning 
attract  attention  by  the  general  perturbation  of  all 
the  mental  functions. 

This  actual  conception  of  partial  delusion  differs 
from  the  old  one  (in  Esquirol's  time)  in  this  respect : 

[ml 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

that,  in  contemporary  science,  "  the  characteristic 
of  partial  disturbance  is  only  relative.  It  should 
be  understood  as  an  extension  of  delusional  ideas 
and  not  as  an  extension  of  an  intellectual  lesion; 
the  delusion  manifests  itself  only  in  connection 
with  a  certain  series  of  ideas,  nevertheless  the  mind 
taken  as  a  whole  is  unbalanced,  it  is  incapable  of 
exact  appreciation  and  of  correcting  the  false  ele- 
ments which  have  taken  possession  of  it." ' 

In  spite  of  all,  one  understands  that  this  form  of 
delusion  is  met  with  in  the  semi-insane,  at  least 
in  certain  cases  and  in  the  first  periods  of  their 
disease. 

I  will  now  conclude  with  a  word  on  the  delu- 
sions of  dreams  or  the  dream  delirium  of  Regis 
which  is  a  form  frequently  observed  in  semi- 
insanity. 

This  delusion  "is  born  and  evolved  during  sleep; 
it  is  formed  by  the  fortuitous  association  of  ideas 
by  the  recalling  of  hallucinatory  images  and  of 
previous  memories,  by  scenes  of  family  or  profes- 
sional life,  by  visions  which  are  often  distressing, 
by  strange  impossible  combinations  of  events 
which  are  principally  moving  and  changing,  or  on 
the  contrary  given  a  peculiar  fixedness,  which 
obtrude  themselves  more  or  less  completely  on 

*  Arnaud  :  "Traitd  cit^  de  Gilbert  Ballet,"  p.  488. 
[112] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

one's  convictions.  In  its  least  marked  form  this 
delusion  is  wholly  nocturnal  and  temporary;  it 
ceases  upon  waking  and  does  not  reappear  until 
evening,  either  toward  dusk,  or  not  until  later, 
with  drowsiness.  In  a  more  marked  degree,  it 
ceases  upon  w^aking,  but  not  completely,  and  is 
reproduced  during  the  day  when  the  patient  closes 
his  eyes  and  dozes.  Finally,  in  its  most  pro- 
nounced form,  the  delirium  does  not  cease  in  the 
morning,  but  it  continues  all  day  until  it  becomes 
truly  a  prolonged  dream.  These  patients  often 
retain  imprinted  on  their  mind,  for  a  greater  or 
less  time  after  they  are  well,  some  single  obsessive, 
tenacious,  false  idea;  a  residue  of  the  principal 
conception  of  their  hallucinatory  dream ;  a  sort  of 
mono-ideaism,  or  post-oniric  fixed  idea^  which  is 
identical  with  the  mono-ideaism,  or  the  posthyp- 
notic fixt  idea." 

In  further  discussing  the  nature  of  this  dream 
delirium,  Regis  is  pleased  to  add:  Grasset* 
says  in  this  connection  .  .  .  that  dream  delir- 
ium is  an  example  of  the  dissociation  of  the  O 
center  and  the  polygon  to  the  profit  of  the  lat- 
ter; that  is,  of  the  two,  the  superior  psychic  activity 
and  the  inferior  or  automatic  psychic  activity,  the 
latter  becomes  predominant.     The   reflection   is 


'See  "  L'Hypnotisme  et  la  Suggestion,"  p.  392. 
8  [113] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

quite  correct;  in  fact,  I  think  that  nothing  could 
better  make  one  understand  the  idea  of  dream 
delirium  as  I  conceive  it  to  be  than  to  see  for  him- 
self the  scheme  and  the  expression  of  Grasset's,  a 
"  type  of  polygonal  delirium." 

4.  Impulsions* 

Among  the  definitions  of  impulsion  we  must 
choose  those  which  separate  impulsion  from  the 
motor  act  which  results  from  it.  Such  is  that  of 
Magnan— "a  mode  of  cerebral  activity  which 
prompts  to  acts  which  the  will  is  sometimes  power- 
less to  hinder."  And  that  of  Regis— "an  irresisti- 
ble tendency  to  the  accomplishment  of  an  act." 

This  is  a  disturbance  of  the  psychic  process  of 
the  execution  or  the  externalization  of  an  idea ;  it 
is  characterized  by  a  violent,  imperative  motive, 
endowed  with  an  extreme  force  of  externalization, 
which  succeeds  in  substituting  itself  for  all  others, 
and  of  replacing  them. 

The  sudden  and  imperative  character  of  an 
impulsion  suppresses  deliberation  and  shortens 
the  psychic  act  of  decision  to  the  point  which 
Pitres  and  Regis  have  defined  as  morbid  impul- 
sion— "  the  imperative  and  often  wholly  irresisti- 
ble tendency  to  return  to  the  pure  reflex,  in  the 


*See  Pitres  et  Rdgis:  Loc.  ciL,  p.  271  and  following. 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

domain  of  voluntary  activity,"  and  Dallemagne^ 
has  said,  "An  impulsion  is,  in  its  way,  a  sort  of 
cortical  reflex." 

Between  an  obsession  and  an  impulsion  there  is 
the  difference  that  exists  between  the  first  and  the 
second  time  of  volition,  between  the  decision  and 
the  execution.  Both  are  powerful  motives  which 
annihilate  the  others,  but  an  impulsion  is  a  motive 
force  which  has  a  great  power  of  externalization,  a 
power  which  an  obsession  does  not  possess.  An 
obsession  becomes  an  impulsion  when  it  is  pushed 
to  the  point  of  externalization. 

According  to  Arnaud,*  the  most  important 
impulsions  frequently  met  as  symptoms  of  semi- 
insanity  are  as  follows :  i.  dipsomania^  impulsion 
to  drink;  2.  sitioinania,  impulsion  to  eat  (from 
crtTto9,  aliment);  3.  kleptoma7iia,  impulsion  to 
steal'  (thefts  from  the  counters  in  large  stores) ;  4. 

'  Dallemagne  :  "  Pathologic  de  la  Volonte,"  p.  68. 

'  Arnaud  :  "  Traits  citd  de  Gilbert  Ballet,"  p.  737. 

'  An  item  in  the  day's  news  reads  ;  "A  polytechnician  in  a  coun- 
cil of  war.  .  .  .  He  was  a  pupil  of  the  Polytechnic  School ;  he  was 
admitted  last  year  as  No.  28.  At  the  same  time  he  was  received  as 
the  thirteenth  in  the  Upper  Normal  School.  The  fellow  is  a  thief. 
He  has  stolen  not  once  in  an  attack  of  madness,  but  he  has  stolen 
often,  methodically  and  knowing  what  he  was  doing.  He  plans  and 
works  out  and  executes  his  various  thefts  with  as  much  intelli- 
gence as  coolness.  He  has  forced  doors  and  coffers  as  a  cracks- 
man emeritus.  And  it  is  not  only  from  his  school  fellows  that  he 
steals,  but  from  the  poor  people  of  the  neighborhood.  ...  He 
has  been  caught  and  arrested.  He  confesses  what  he  has  done, 
but  seems  to  show  no  sign  of  remorse.     With  perfect  intellectual 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

pyromaniay  obsessive  idea  of  fire,  finally  causing 
a  strong  impulsion  to  set  something  on  fire;  5. 
homicidal  impulsion;  "the  impulsive  murderer 
.  .  .  retains  consciousness,  at  least  to  a  relative 
degree,  and  a  detailed  memory  of  his  acts,  which 
he  considers  abominable  and  without  excuse;  he 
is  carried  away  by  an  impulsive  obsession  of  which 
he  disapproves  and  against  which  he  struggles  in 
every  way,  and  which  too  often  subjugates  his  will 
and  strength  of  action  "  ;  6.  suicidal  impulsion ;  7. 
ono7itato7nania,  impulsion  to  repeat  a  word,  and 
aritkomaiiia ;   8.  echolalia,  impulsion  "  to  repeat 

faculties  his  moral  sense  is  totally  lacking.  But,  look  at  him  a 
moment.  This  polytechnician  with  the  shining  eyes,  alternately 
impudent  and  shy,  ^rith  his  asymmetric  face  and  his  narrow, 
bent  shoulders  that  jerk  nervously.  It  is  plain  to  see  that  he  is  a 
degenerate.  One  would  say  a  hysteric.  .  •  .  This  sad  case  has 
less  to  do  with  psychology  than  with  pathology.  .  .  .  All  the 
witnesses  say:  He  is  a  neurotic  man,  an  impulsive  and  exalted, 
unbalanced,  diseased  individual.  He  feels  violently,  but  can  only 
reason  a  little.  He  is  queer  and  fantastic  and  has  been  absent 
many  times.  He  has  no  scruples.  One  day  he  told  his  comrade 
V. :  'If  I  should  meet  somebody  in  the  corner  of  the  woods,  some 
one  with  a  good,  large  sum  of  money,  and  I  could  steal  from  him 
without  being  caught,  I  would  not  hesitate  a  second  to  do  so.  .  .  .' 
As  he  himself  piteously  confest,  he  had  foolishly  squandered  the 
money  he  had  stolen;  he  had  bought  a  leather  valise,  a  modern 
teapot,  a  cane  with  a  golden  knob,  a  woman's  comb,  a  fur  coat 
for  automobiling.  ...  Is  it  for  these  that  he  has  ruined  his 
career,  and  besmirched  the  honor  of  his  family?  No,  as  Major 
Lemoine  and  Dr.  Vallon,  the  alienist  of  Sainte-Anne,  have  shown, 
such  foolish  thefts  can  only  be  explained  as  morbid  impulsions. 
Since  his  arrest  he  has  had  two  attacks  of  major  hysteria,  and  he 
has  had  to  be  cared  for  at  Val-deGrace.  His  responsibility  is 
therefore  very  much  diminished  "  (Le  Matin,  May  27,  1906). 

[116] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

immediately  and  after  the  fashion  of  an  echo  any 
word  which  is  heard,  or  written  words  and  some- 
times even  one's  own  thought "  ;  and  9.  coprolalia^ 
impulsion  "  to  pronounce  obscene  words." 

This  last  type  is  often  associated  with  tics. 
Those  impulsions  which  lead  to  repetitions  of 
actions  may  be  considered  as  psychic  tics. 

The  following  enumeration  of  Regis  is  more 
complete:  i.  Impulsions  to  tics,  gestures,  and 
words;  2.  impulsions  to  ridiculous  and  clownish 
actions;  3.  impulsions  to  stupid  and  extravagant 
actions ;  4.  impulsions  to  coarse  and  repugnant  ac- 
tions; 5.  impulsions  to  ambulatory  actions ;  6.  im- 
pulsions to  acts  of  appropriation  and  theft;  7.  im- 
pulsions to  erotic  actions;  9.  impulsions  to  incen- 
diary actions;  10.  impulsions  to  actions  of  vio- 
lence against  oneself;  II.  impulsions  to  actions  of 
violence  against  others ;  12.  impulsions  to  become 
intoxicated. 

I  will  say  a  few  words  about  the  flights  of  am- 
bulatory patients.  Charcot*  has  published  a  very 
curious  history  of  this  type  of  patient,  which  has 
become  classic.  A  man  went  out  one  day  in 
Paris,  commissioned  by  his  employer  to  draw 
some  money;  at  a  certain  moment  he  lost  con- 
sciousness and  memory,  even  forgot  his  coachman, 

'Charcot:  "  Lemons  du  Mardi,  31  Janvier,  18SS,  et  21  F^vrier, 
1889." 

["7] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

and  came  to  himself  eight  days  later  in  a  strange 
town,  on  a  bridge,  near  a  passing  regiment,  whose 
music  had  awakened  him.  Fearing  to  be  laughed 
at,  he  did  not  dare  ask  the  name  of  the  town  in 
which  he  found  himself,  so  he  only  inquired  the 
way  to  the  station,  and  there,  to  his  amazement, 
read  "  Brest "  ;  he  had  made  the  journey  by  rail- 
way, and  bought  his  ticket,  avoided  a  number  of 
obstacles  on  the  way,  had  eaten  and  possibly  had 
taken  a  room  somewhere ;  he  had  spent  two  hun- 
dred francs  of  the  nine  hundred  which  he  had 
drawn  for  his  employer.  .  .  .  He  then  had  the 
unfortunate  idea  of  placing  himself  under  the  pro- 
tection of  a  policeman,  to  whom  he  showed  a  pre- 
scription of  Charcot's  and  who  replied,  "  That  is 
all  right,  I  know  him,"  and  took  him  to  the  police 
station.  They  then  put  him  to  bed  on  a  straw 
pallet  in  a  cell,  while  they  telegraphed  to  his  em- 
ployer to  confirm  his  story.  The  employer  tele- 
graphed in  reply:  "Hold  him  under  arrest;  the 
money  which  he  carries  is  mine."  After  a  series 
of  transfers  from  the  police  station  to  the  Palais 
and  from  the  Palais  to  prison  (where  he  remained 
ten  days),  he  was  at  last  sent  back  to  Paris,  where 
he  was  discharged  by  his  employer.  The  Mutual 
Aid  Society  of  which  he  was  a  member  refused  to 
pay  subsidies  under  the  pretext  that  his  disease 
was  caused  by  intemperance. 

[ii8] 


CLINICAL   PROOF   OF  EXISTENCE 

I  have  studied  ^  a  patient  who  had  formerly  been 
treated  by  Pitres,  whose  observations  were  pub- 
hshed  by  Bitot.' 

One  year  in  July  while  in  Paris,  he  went  to  the 
Gare  d'Orleans,  without  any  reason  for  so  doing. 
All  along  the  way  he  saw  nothing  but  sinister 
faces,  and  nothing  seemed  natural  to  him ;  more- 
over, there  was  a  storm.  At  the  ticket-office  he 
asked  for  a  ticket  to  "  no  matter  where."  They 
thought  he  was  a  queer  customer  and  sold  him  a 
ticket  for  a  near  station.  During  the  journey 
there  he  thought  he  was  going  to  meet  a  relative ; 
when  he  arrived  at  his  destination  indicated, 
he  walked  around,  but  saw  none  of  his  relatives 
and  returned  to  Paris  utterly  disgusted  by  his  ad- 
venture, which  he  could  not  understand. 

Pitres'  has  also  described  a  very  curious  case 
of  a  "traveler"  who,  apart  from  his  vagaries,  had 
no  delusional  ideas,  but  who  made  a  series  of  im- 
pulsive journeys,  like  a  regular  Wandering  Jew.* 

'"  Lemons  de  Clinique  Mddicale,"  2d  series,  p.  iii. 

'Bitot:  Th^se  de  Bordeaux,  1890. 

"Pitres:  "  Leqons  Cliniques  sur  I'Hystdrie  et  rHypnotisme," 
1891,  t.  ii.,  p.  269. 

*  See  further  on  this  question :  The  essay  of  Tissie  on  "  Les 
Alien^s  Voyageurs  " ;  Gehin  :  ".Contribution  k  I'fitude  de  I'Auto- 
matisme  Ambulatoire  ou  Vagabondage  Impulsif,"  Th5se  de  Bor- 
deaux, 1892  ;  Meige,  "  fitude  sur  Certains  Neuropathes  Voyageurs, 
le  Juif  Errant  k  la  Salpetri^re,"  Th^se  de  Paris,  1893,  No.  315; 
Alfred  Fournier,  J.-Ch.  Kohne,  et  Gilles  de  la  Tourette :  Medi- 
colegal report  on  a  military  deserter  attacked  with  ambulatory  au- 

[119] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Patients  who  make  such  journeys— and  they  are 
numerous^ — prove  better  than  any  number  of  the- 
oretical expositions  the  actual  existence  of  the 
semi-insane,  their  clinical  characteristics,  and, 
above  all,  the  importance  of  their  study,  not  only 
for  physicians,  but  for  society  at  large.  The  unfor- 
tunate patient  of  Charcot's  would  have  been  spared 
many  tribulations  if  on  the  failure  of  the  police- 
man the  magistrates,  at  least,  had  known  more 
about  this  kind  of  patient.  Evidently  he  was  not 
insane  in  the  complete  sense  of  the  word,  for  from 
Paris  to  Brest  he  was  able  to  reply  and  to  reason 
very  well ;  but  he  could  no  longer  be  called  a  psy- 

tomatism  ;    "  Nouvelle   Iconographie  de  la  Salpetri^re,"  t.  viii., 

1895.  P-  348. 

'General  News:  Young  R.  P.  is  decidedly  incorrigible.  Our 
readers  will  doubtless  recall  how  he  went  away  on  the  second  of 
May  last  in  company  with  one  of  his  school  fellows,  .  .  .  from  his 
father's  home,  No.  —  of Street,  Paris.  Found  in  the  de- 
partment of  Aveyron  and  brought  home  by  his  father,  he  has  run 
away  again  from  home,  with  this  aggravating  circumstance,  that  he 
has  taken  away  the  sum  of  five  thousand  francs  (Le  Journal, 
May  26,  1906). 

Recently  a  man  went  through  Paris,  walking  straight  ahead  of 
him.  He  was  covered  with  a  thick  coating  of  dust.  All  at  once 
a  cab  came  along  at  a  rapid  pace  and  barely  escaped  knocking  the 
foot-passenger  over. 

The  man  awakened  and  asked:  "Where  am  I?"  "In  Paris," 
they  replied.  The  unfortunate  fellow  could  not  grasp  this. 
Seized  with  the  desire  to  walk,  he  had  without  knowing  it  come 
from  the  farther  part  of  the  South,  crossing  France  on  foot,  going 
straight  ahead,  until  he  came  to  the  capital.  The  accident  of 
which  he  was  nearly  the  victim  was  the  only  thing  that  had  inter- 
rupted his  course  (Le  Mistral  d'Avignon,  January  10,  1906). 

[120] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

chically  normal  man,  as  between  Paris  and  Brest 
he  had  acted  without  knowledge,  memory,  or  re- 
sponsibility. 

Whatever  may  be  their  form,  these  impulsions 
have  nevertheless  common  characteristics :  "  Lucid 
consciousness,  agonizing  struggle,  irresistibility, 
emotivity,  and  reHef  following  the  accomplishment 
of  the  act"  (Magnan  and  Legrain),  not  depend- 
ing on  the  fact  of  whether  the  accomplishment 
of  the  act  was  successful  or  possibly  fatal  in  its 
results. 

5.  Aboulias  and  Paraboulias* 

Pierre  Janet  divides  the[abouIias  (weakness  of  the 
will)  into:  i.  systematized  aboulias,  helplessness 
of  the  will,  not  bearing  on  the  actions  taken  as  a 
whole,  but  on  a  particular  act  or  on  a  system  of 
special  acts;  2.  /<?r^/z>^</ aboulias,  partial  helpless- 
ness as  in  the  preceding  cases,  but  not  systema- 
tized; momentary  or  periodic  aboulias,  a  group 
not  clearly  defined ;  3.  general  aboulias,  "  which 
bear  simultaneously  on  all  the  actions  of  all  the 
thoughts." 

In  the  aboulias  Pierre  Janet  has  very  clearly 
shown  that  the  disturbance  bears  upon  the  true 

*See  Pierre  Janet:  "Mental  State  of  Hystericals,"  Putnam, 
New  York;  "  Les  Stigmates  Mentaux,"  Eiblioth^que  Charcot- 
Debove,  1893,  p.  122,  and  "  N^vroses  et  Id^es  Fixes,"  2  vols.. 
Par-is,  F.  A  lean,  1898. 

[121] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

superior  will,  altho,  on  the  contrary,  the  polygo- 
nal acts  persist.  This  is  what  he  expresses  in  the 
three  following  characteristics:  i.  Conservation  of 
old  actions  (which  have  become  polygonal) ;  2.  loss 
of  new  actions  (O);  3.  conservation  of  subcon- 
scious actions  and  loss  of  the  personal  perception 
of  the  acts. 

This  is  what  is  also  exprest  in  the  law  of  Ribot: 
"  Dissolution  proceeds  retrogressively  from  the 
most  voluntary  and  the  most  complex  to  the  least 
voluntary  and  the  most  simple ;  that  is  to  say,  to- 
ward automatism." 

To  a  lesser  degree  it  is  "  the  caprices  or  phenom- 
ena of  the  polygon  that  hold  sway."  One  must 
not  class  among  the  aboulias  (as  there  is  too  often 
a  tendency  to  do)  those  subjects  (obsessed  and 
anorexic)  whose  will  is  disturbed  by  the  exaggera- 
tion of  a  partially  arrested  volition.  These  are 
paraboulias;  they  are  abominably  and  perversely 
obstinate. 

We  must  distinguish  between  the  aboulia  of 
volition,  in  which  the  subjects  do  not  wish  to  act, 
and  the  aboulia  of  execution,  in  which  the  subjects 
can  not  externalize  their  decision ;  that  is,  to  make 
it  pass  into  a  motor  act. 

"  In  the  normal  man,"  says  Seglas,  "  these  two 

phenomena  approach  each  other  so  closely  as  to 

be  almost  confused.     But  in  certain  conditions, 

[122] 


CLINICAL   PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

according  to  the  observations  of  the  patients  them- 
selves, it  is  necessary  to  make  a  distinction,  and 
one  must  distinguish  the  individual,  who  grasps  in 
his  mind  the  action  to  be  accomplished,  but  who 
does  not  find  in  his  mind  the  means  of  bringing  it 
about,  from  the  aboulic  person,  who  neither  con- 
ceives the  action  nor  makes  any  effort."  The 
first  has  the  non-ability  (aboulia  of  execution),  the 
second  has  the  non-willingness  (aboulia  of  volition). 

In  the  aboulia  of  execution  the  patients,  says 
Guislain  (quoted  by  Ribot),  "are  able  to  wish  in 
their  hearts  and  minds  to  do  a  thing  in  a  natural 
and  proper  way.  They  may  even  make  an  at- 
tempt to  do  it,  but  they  are  powerless  to  make  it 
come  about.  .  .  .  The  /  want  to  does  not  pass 
over  into  an  impulsive  volition  or  an  active  deter- 
mination." 

Hypomimia  (weakness  of  emotive  mimicry), 
hyPoseniia^  and  asemia  (weakness  of  language 
mimicry)  form  a  part,  at  least  in  certain  cases,  of 
these  aboulias  of  execution  of  externalization. 

6.  Troubles  of  General  Sensibility' 

"  The  name  cenestkesia,  or  sensation  of  exist- 
ence, has  been  given  to  the  feeling  which  we  have 

*  See  Seglas:  "Traits  cit^  de  Gilbert  Ballet," p.  172;  Ribot: 
"Maladies  de  la  Personnalit^,"  p.  22,  Bibliothfeque  de  Philosophic 
Contemporaine.     Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

t"3! 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

of  the  existence  of  our  body,  a  sensation  which,  in 
its  normal  state,  is  accompanied  by  a  certain  feel- 
ing of  well-being.  Each  vital  function  contributes 
its  part  to  it,  and  from  the  complex  result  we  get 
this  vague  idea"  which  constitutes,  in  fact,  the 
consciousness  of  the  physical  ego,  and  which  in- 
cludes all  the  endogenous  feelings  which  we  have 
in  our  body  and  our  organs.  "  It  is  the  sum  total, 
the  unexplained  chaos  of  sensations,  which  are  un- 
ceasingly transmitted  to  the  sensorium  from  all 
points  of  the  body  "  (Henle).  It  is  "  the  fundamen- 
tal feeling  of  existence  "  (Condillac),  "  the  feeling 
of  sensitive  existence "  (Maine  de  Biran),  which 
has  been  carefully  studied  by  Jouffroy. 

I  will  divide  the  disturbances  of  general  sensibility 
as  observed  in  the  semi-insane  into  four  groups : 

I.  Autoscopic  Phenomena^ 

When  the  polygon  is  dissociated  in  sleep  there 
are  sometimes  revealed  to  it  certain  cenesthesic  sen- 
sations which  come  with  particular  force  and  lend 
to  the  dream  a  certain  prophetic  or  premonitory 
appearance.  This  is  more  distinct  in  hypnosis 
(Sollier),  for  in  this  state  the  relations  become 
much  more  intimate  in  both  senses  (centripetal 
and  centrifugal)  between  the  psychic  centers  and 

'See  Paul  Sollier:  "Les  Phdnom^nes  d'Autoscopie,"  Biblio- 
tb^quc  de  Philosophic  Contemporaine,  1903.    Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

[124] 


CLINICAL   PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

the  normal  organic  functions  submitted  to  their 
influence. 

Comar  ^  and  Sollier  have  described  in  certain 
patients  the  possibility  of  feeling  and  representing 
to  themselves  certain  of  their  organs  (internal  au- 
toscopy).  Sollier  has  even  met  patients  who  de- 
scribed to  him  the  "microscopic  formation"  of 
their  ovaries  and  their  brain !  Certain  patients  of 
Comar  have  traced  the  course  of  foreign  bodies  in 
their  body.  In  other  cases  the  subject  feels  that 
his  entire  body  is  objective  to  himself;  he  sees  it 
standing  before  him.  This  is  what  we  may  call 
externa/  2iUtoscopY.  It  is  the  au^oscopzc  or  specu- 
lar hallucination  of  Fere,  and  the  deuteroscopy  of 
Brierre  de  Boismont. 

Paul  Sollier  distinguishes  three  external  forms 
of  autoscopy:  i.  specular  autoscopy,  where  the 
fantom  is  identical  with  the  actual  subject;  2.  dis- 
similar autoscopy,  where  the  fantom  differs  from 
the  subject  in  its  external  attributes,  but  is  mor- 
ally one  and  the  same  with  himself;  3.  cenesthetic 
autoscopy,  where  the  double  is  only  felt  and  not 
seen,  but  recognized  as  being  identical  with  the 
subject. 


'Comar:  "L'Auto-Repr^sentation  del'Organisme  chez  Quelques 
Hysteriques,"  Revue  Neurologique,  1901,  p.  491,  and  Presse  Mddi- 
cale,  January  17,  1903.  See  the  entire  bibliography  of  the  question 
in  the  book  quoted  by  Paul  Sollier. 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Sollier  finally  describes,  under  the  name  of 
"  negative  autoscopy,"  the  cases  in  which  the  sub- 
ject looking  at  himself  in  the  mirror  is  not  able  to 
see  himself. 

2.  False  Sensations  of  Disease.    Hypochondria 

Hypochondria,  which  we  must  not  confuse  with 
the  dread  of  disease  (nosophobia),  is  really  a  dis- 
turbance of  general  sensibility.  The  subject y^^/y 
himself  to  be  sick;  this  is  a  disorder  of  general  sen- 
sibility, for  as  he  really  is  not  ill  it  is  rather  an  illu- 
sion than  a  hallucination,  because  more  often  the 
subject  wrongly  interprets  real  endogenous  sensa- 
tions. This  sensation  of  disease  may  give  rise  in 
the  subject  to  an  emotion,  a  certain  degree  of 
anguish  and  of  phobia;  but  the  emotional  dis- 
turbance is  not  indispensable  to  the  formation  of 
hypochondria. 

According  to  Gilbert  Ballet  and  Seglas,  one  may 
recognize  three  degrees  of  hypochondriacal  dis- 
turbances: I.  Hypochondriacal  sensations  (hypo- 
chondria minor);  2.  Hypochondriacal  sensations 
with  emotion  (hypochondriac  phobias,  nosomania, 
nosophobia) ;  3.  Hypochondriacal  sensations  with 
delusional  ideas  {.kypochojzdria  major,  systematized 
false  and  absurd  ideas ;  hypochondriac  insanity).^ 

*  See  Arnaud  :  Loc.  cii.,  p.  557. 
[126] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

3.  Discontent  and  Exaggerated  Contentment 
(^Euphoria  of  the  Physical  Ego) 

A  slight  degree  of  hypochondria  constitutes  phys- 
ical discontent.  Without  really  feeling  sick,  the 
patient  feels  ill  at  ease ;  he  observes  his  symptoms 
and  hunts  for  morbid  feelings ;  he  consults  physi- 
cians and  avoids  all  supposable  causes  of  disease. 
Such  people  are  timid  zbout  their  health.  This 
discontent  with  themselves  may  lead  (Pierre  Janet) 
to  the  obsession  of  bodily  shame  with  anguish 
(sensation  of  incompleteness  in  effort). 

Speaking  of  this  symptom  we  may  contrast  it 
with  its  opposite,  euphoria,  or  the  exaggerated  feel- 
ing of  contentment  of  the  physical  ego  {optimism 
being  rather  an  exaggerated  feeling  of  content- 
ment of  the  personal  ego  taken  as  a  whole). 
These  patients  fear  nothing.  They  feel  better 
than  ever,  they  do  not  want  to  consult  a  doctor  or 
take  the  most  elementary  precautions;  they  are 
indifferent  to  their  physical  surroundings  or  hold 
them  in  contempt;  they  will  take  any  risk  and 
boast  of  it. 

These  troubles  are  more  often  complicated 
with  emotional  disturbances;  self-discontent  is 
sad,  while  euphoria  is  gay. 


[127] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

4.  Disturbances  0/  Some  Particular  Ce^iesthetic 
Sejisatio7ts 

Each  of  the  sensations  of  our  bodies  may  be  the 
object  of  a  disturbance.  Such  are  disturbances  of 
the  instinct  oj  nutrition^  which  are  thus  summed 
up  by  Seglas: 

Instinct  of  nutrition: 

Augmented:  voracity,  bouHmia,  chewing  the 
cud. 

Diminished:  anorexia,  fear  of  feeding,  fasting 
mania. 

Perverted:  preference  for  or  repugnance  to 
certain  foods  or  liquids,  dipsomania,  ingestion 
of  various  non-alimentary  substances,  dirt-eaters, 
offal-eaters. 

The  sensory-motor  functions  may  be  the  start- 
ing-point of  symptoms  of  the  same  group. 

Certain  patients  "  have  a  delightful  sense  of 
lightness  in  their  bodies.  They  feel  themselves 
suspended  in  the  air;  they  believe  that  they  can 
fly;  or  else  they  have  a  feeling  of  great  heaviness 
all  through  the  body,  or  in  some  limbs,  or  in  a 
single  limb,  which  seems  enormously  large  and 
heavy";  or  else  the  patient  " feels  himself  much 
smaller  or  much  larger  than  he  is  in  reality."  * 

'  Ribot :  "  Maladies  de  la  Personnalitd,"  p.  35.    Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

[128] 


CLINICAL   PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

7.  Disturbances  of  Personality  and  of  the 
Idea  of  the  Ego 

I.  Diminution  and  Exaggeration  of  the  Idea  of 
the  Ego.     Egoism  and  Morbid  Timidity 

Timidity  becomes  morbid  when  it  is  accom- 
panied by  apprehensive  anguish  and  passes  into 
a  phobia. 

The  psychic  acts  disappear,  commencing  with 
the  highest  and  most  altruistic,  and  ending  with 
the  most  personal  and  lowest.  The  emotions  rela- 
tive to  the  ego  persist  until  the  last  and  take  unto 
themselves  greater  and  greater  importance;  thus 
egoism  is  one  of  the  chief  symptoms  which  is 
nearly  always  present  in  the  psychoses  and  even 
as  a  rule  in  the  neuroses. 

This  egoism,  moreover,  according  to  the  case, 
appears  under  various  aspects  such  as:  suspicious 
and  vindictive  self-love,  the  egocentric  character 
of  the  man  with  systematized  delusions,  the  absent- 
minded  indifference  of  the  melancholic  or  the 
hypochondriac,  the  apathy  of  the  demented,  the 
negligence  of  the  paralytic,  the  fallacy  of  the  argu- 
mentative man,  the  hypocrisy  of  the  imbecile,  the 
crankiness  of  the  maniac* 

'Seglas:  Loc.ciL,  p.  159. 
9  I  129] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

2.  Optimism.    Ideas  of  Grandeur 

Optimism  is  a  happy  feeling  of  the  entire  ego, 
both  physical  and  psychic.  The  patient  feels 
himself  to  be  strong  both  physically  and  intel- 
lectually. 

If  he  goes  a  step  further  than  this  he  has  ideas 
of  grandeur  which  Seglas  divides  into:  a.  Ideas  of 
satisfaction,  capability,  strength,  power,  riches;  b. 
Ideas  of  pride,  ideas  of  grandeur  properly  so-called, 
ambitious  ideas. 

3.  Ideas  of  Denial  or  Partial  or  Total  Trans- 
formation  of  the  Ego 

Dissatisfaction  with  self  forms  the  first  degree 
of  this  group  in  which  in  a  little  more  advanced 
state  there  are  ideas  of  diminished  importance,  and 
finally  ideas  of  partial  or  total  denial  of  the  ego. 

In  these  deniers^  we  find  a  "peculiar  conviction 
corresponding  to  the  idea  of  change,  of  destruction 
or  absence  and  non-existence " ;  these  patients 
"  have  no  name  nor  age ;  they  are  without  family 
and  without  feeling.  .  .  ." 

These  ideas  of  negation  may  or  may  not  be  sys- 
tematized. One  can  compare  them  to  ideas  of 
bodily  transformation  {metabolic  delusions);     the 

*  See  Seglas :  Loc.  cii.,  pp.  256,  260,  270. 
[130] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

patient    is    shut    up    in    glass,  in    wood,  or    in 
rubber. 

4.  Ideas  of  Persecution  and  Defense 

It  is  only  necessary  for  the  patient  to  look  for 
some  interpretation  of  these  sad  ideas  of  denial  or 
of  transformation  of  the  ego,  or  that  he  should 
attribute  them  to  some  external  origin  in  order 
to  arrive  at  ideas  of  persecution. 

This  is  much  more  distinctly  a  para  disturb- 
ance of  the  idea  of  the  ego ;  for  the  characteristic 
thing  of  these  patients  is  "pride,  self-love"  (Ball), 
egocentric  characters  as  the  Germans  call  them, 
which  in  his  relations  to  the  external  world  leads 
the  individual  to  look  at  everything  in  a  pe- 
culiar way,  and  to  see  therein  some  relation  to 
himself. 

In  addition  to  these  people  with  true  persecutory 
ideas  who  attribute  their  persecution  to  some  ex- 
ternal cause  there  are  some  who  have  self-accusing 
ideas  of  persecution,  who  consider  that  the  cause 
of  their  unhappy  ideas  comes  from  within  them- 
selves. 

With  ideas  of  outside  persecution,  ideas  of  pas- 
sive defense  are  very  easily  and  naturally  associated 
(Seglas);  the  patient  is  convinced  that  by  the  side 
of  the  individuals  who  are  pursuing  him  there  are 
others  who  are  defending  him. 

[131] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

5.  Disturbances  of  the  Idea  oj  Personality 

Every  individual  has  only  one  real  and  normal 
physiological  personality  formed  by  the  ensemble 
and  the  synthesis  of  all  his  nervous  centers,  and 
resulting  in  the  idea  of  the  conscious  ego. 

Without  being  insane,  a  psychically  diseased  in- 
dividual may  have  a  doubling  of  his  personality, 
or  changes  or  transformations  in  it  (hypnosis, 
trance  of  mediums).  In  these  cases  the  true  su- 
perior personality  is  not  modified,  but  abnormal 
polygonal  personalities  arise  after  the  disaggrega- 
tion of  the  subpolygon.  There  is  then  temporary 
suspension  of  the  idea  of  personality,  the  O  is 
asleep,  but,  on  waking,  everything  gets  back  into 
order;  there  has  been  no  real  morbid  disturbance 
of  the  idea  of  personality.^ 

If,  on  the  contrary,  there  had  been  change  and 
disturbance  of  the  psychic  functions  taken  as  a 
whole  (including  the  O),  the  idea  of  self  and  of 
one's  personality  might  be  really  changed  and  dis- 
turbed; such  are  true  diseases  of  personality  by 
reason  of  the  disturbance  of  the  superior  idea  of 
self.  In  the  same  way  the  characters  of  the  polyg- 
onal types  heretofore  indicated  are  found,   in  a 


*  See,  for  these  facts,  Alfred  Binet:  "  Les  Alterations  de  la  Per- 
sonnalit^,"  Biblioth^que  Scientifique  Internationale,  1892.  Paris, 
F.  Alcan. 

[132] 


CLINICAL   PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

lesser  degree,  in  the  less  afflicted,  that  is  to  say, 
in  the  semi-insane. 

When  the  O  is  weakened,  it  is  a  polygonal  per- 
sonality which  appears,  coexisting  with  the  true 
personality,  alternating  with  it,  substituting  itself 
for  it,  or  growing  weaker  with  it.  These  are  all 
types  of  disturbances  described.^ 

Pierre  Janet  has  also  described  obsession  of  de- 
personalization. 

8.  Disturbances  of  the  Social  Psychism 

Psychic  acts  may  be  divided  into  two  classes 
corresponding  to  life  in  society :  psychic  social  acts 
(of  man  in  society)  and  psychic  collective  acts  (of 
societies  of  men).  The  disturbances  which  the 
demifous  may  present  correspond  to  these  two 
groupings  of  human  life,  the  social  side  and  the 
collective  side.  We  will  arrange  them  under  three 
heads:  i.  disturbances  of  social  and  moral  ideas; 
2.  disturbances  of  religious  [.ideas ;  3.  gregarious 
disturbances  of  the  masses. 

I .  Disturbances  of  Social  and  Moral  Ideas 

To  this  series  belong  the  two  following  groups 
of  the  classification  of  Morselli  and  Seglas:* 

'See  Seglas:  Loc.  at.,  p.  22S;  Rogues  de  Fursac:  Loc.  cit.,  p. 
84 ;  Ribot:  "  Les  Maladies  de  la  Personnalitd,"  pp.  136,  147. 
'Seglas:  Loc. cit. ,-^.  168. 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

{a)  Acts  concerning  the   material   relations  of 
the  individual  to  his  social  environment. 
Capacity  for  work : 

Disordered  activity,  diminution  of  activity  or 
absolute  inertia,  instability,  automatic  work. 
Instinct  of  property: 

Diminished:     indifference,    prodigality,    de- 
structive impulsions. 
Augmented:   jealousy,  fear  of  theft,  a  mania 

for  buying. 
Perverted :  kleptomania,  desire  to  collect  and 
hoard. 
Judicial  interests: 

Litigious  insanity,  a  mania  for  quarrels. 
{d)  Acts  concerning  the  emotional  relations  of 
the  individual  and  his  social  environment. 
In  social  life: 

Negligence  or  eccentricity  of  behavior,  con- 
tempt for  proprieties  and   rules  of  polite 
living. 
Altruistic   sentiments:   egoism,  misanthropic 
generosity,  suggestibility,  tendency  to  vio- 
lence, blows,  wounds,  homicide. 
Sentiments  of  justice:   calumny,  theft,  pyro- 
mania,  exaggeration  of  particular  interests 
and   rights,  claims,  scandals,  acts  of  ven- 
geance intended  to  draw  public  attention, 
pseudochantage,    litigation    mania;    senti- 
I134] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

ments  of   solidarity;    nostalgia,  zoophilia, 
pseudoreformers,  regicides,  peculiar  disposi- 
tion of  wills. 
The  most  important  of  these  disturbances  of 
social  and  moral   ideas  may   be   grouped  under 
three  heads:  i.  political,  anarchistic,  and  regicidal 
delusions;    2.    hypomoralistic :    absence  of  moral 
sense,  moral  insanity,  or  moral  idiocy,  obsession  of 
crime,  homicide;   3.  the  paramoralistic :  the  scru- 
pulous, remorseful,  autoaccusers. 

2.  Disturbances  of  Religious  Ideas 
I  think  I  may  say  that  Sergi^  exaggerates  a  lit- 
tle when  he  considers  religion  as  a  "pathological 
manifestation  of  the  function  of  protection  " ;  there 
are  religious  individuals  who  are  so  in  all  good 
faith  and  who  are  not  at  all  diseased. 

But  like  all  other  psychic  acts,  religious  ideas 
may  be  the  starting-point  or  the  manifestation  of 
certain  disturbances  which  Seglas  has  enumerated 
thus:  insanity  of  doubt,  superstitions,  demono- 
mania  under  its  various  forms,  mania  for  fasting, 
mutilations,  suicide,  homicide,  diseased  exaggera- 
tion of  religious  practises,  amulets,  illuminism, 
seers  of  visions,  prophets  and  founders  of  extrava- 
gant religions. 

*  Sergi :  "  Les  Emotions,"  trad.  Petrucci.  Biblioth^que  Inter- 
nationale de  Psychologic  Expdrimentale,  Normale  et  Fatholo- 
gique,  1901,  p.  404. 

1 135  3 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

One  may  group  the  most  important  of  these 
disturbances  under  the  two  following  heads:  i. 
Diseased  exaggeration  of  religious  ideas :  ecstasy/ 
mysticism,  superstitions,  ritual  practises  going 
even  as  far  as  automutilation,  or  even  to  suicide 
or  homicide  (sacrifices).  2.  Perversion  of  the  relig- 
ious idea:  demonomania  or  demonopathy,  demon- 
olatry,  theomania,  religious^  and  blasphematory 
delusions,  sacrilegious  obsessions'  and  impulsions. 

All  these  diseased  people  are  religious  and 
have  religious  ideas,  which,  however,  are  perverted ; 
for  true  and  whole-hearted  unbelief  has  no  ten- 
dency to  blasphemy  or  sacrilege.  These  crimes, 
which  exist  solely  by  reason  of  their  profane  char- 
acter, can  be  understood  only  as  a  perversion  of  a 
persistent  idea.  One  must  still  have  a  distorted 
religious  idea  if  one  would  rather  steal  the  con- 
secrated host  than  the  precious  vessel  which  con- 
tains it. 

All  these  disturbances  are  therefore /^nz  rather 
than  hypo^  for  an  individual  has  no  right  to  be 
considered  diseased  either  because  he  has  a  relig- 
ion or  because  he  has  none. 

*See  Murissier:  "  Les  Maladies  du  Sentiment  R^ligieux."  Bi- 
blioth^que  de  Philosophie  Contemporaine,  2d  edit.,  1903.  Paris, 
F.  Alcan. 

*  See  Seglas:  Loc.  ct't.,  p.  261,  et  Arnaud,  ibid.,  p.  568. 

'See  Pierre  Janet:  "Les  Obsessions  et  la  Psychasth^nie,"  t.  i., 
p.  9.    Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

[136] 


CLINICAL   PROOF   OF  EXISTENCE 

3.  Gregarious  Disturbances 

I  include  under  this  title  the  disturbances  of 
the  individual  psychism  as  manifested  in  crowds; 
the  psychic  disturbances  presented  by  individuals 
living  in  a  community  and  combining,  as  it  were, 
by  reason  of  their  collective  life,  the  more  particu- 
lar cause  of  their  development  of  form. 

The  crowd,^  which  has  lately  been  made  a  sub- 
ject of  study,  is  only  one  of  the  forms  of  collec- 
tivity. It  is  a  good  example  for  analysis,  because 
the  crowd  presents  in  the  highest  degree,  even  in 
an  exaggerated  form,  the  general  psychological 
characteristics  of  all  communities.  The  thing 
that  rules  the  psychology  of  communities  is  that 
each  individual  which  forms  a  part  of  it  resigns 
more  or  less  voluntarily  the  peculiar  psychic  con- 
trol of  his  O  center;  his  dissociated  polygon  per- 
forms its  functions  alone  as  it  does  in  distraction, 
or  passion,  and  hypnosis,  and  he  is  guided  either 
by  his  neighbors  (contagion  of  crowds)  or  by  the 

'  See  Gustave  Le  Bon  :  "Psychologiedes  Foules,"  Bibliotheque 
de  Philosophie  Contemporaine,  nth  edit.,  1905.  Paris,  F.  Alcan  ; 
Scipio  Sighele :  "  Psychologia  des  Sectes,"  trad.  Louis  Brandin, 
Biblioth&que  Sociologique  Internationale,  1898,  et  "  La  Foule 
Criminelle.  Essai  de  Psychologic  Collective,"  Bibliotheque  de 
Philosophie  Contemporaine,  2d  edit.  ,1901;  Tarde  :  "  L'Opinion 
et  la  Foule,"  meme  Bibliotheque,  1901.  See  also,  on  the  imagina- 
tion of  crowds,  Dufras  :  "L'Imagination,"  Bibliotheque  Interna- 
tionale, Normale  et  Pathologique,  1903,  p.  181.  See  also  Cabanas 
et  L.  Nass  :  *'  La  N^vrose  Rdvolutionnaire,"  preface,  Jules  Claretie. 

[137] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

leaders.  Therefore  the  responsibiHty  for  gregari- 
ous acts  ought  to  be  placed  more  often,  at  least  in 
part,  upon  the  leaders. 

Thus  constituted,  the  community  forms  a  sort 
of  complex  individual,  but  one  whose  psychology 
has  been  studied  under  the  name  of  "  the  soul  of 
the  crowd  "  submitted  to  the  law  of  mental  unity 
of  crowds. 

The  crowd  may  also  be  scattered^  that  is  to  say 
by  the  press,  by  lectures,  and  also  by  books.  There 
may  be  established  a  community  of  opinion^  which 
forms  a  great  mental  unity,  whose  members  are 
separated  one  from  another  in  space  and  time.  It 
is  thus  that  parties,  sects,  public  opinion,  and 
castes  are  formed. 

The  classification  of  the  crowd  according  to  Le 
Bon  is  as  follows : 

Heterogeneous  crowds: 

1.  htformal:  Street  crowds,  for  example; 

2.  Formal:      Juries,     parliamentary     assem- 

blies, etc. 
Homogeneous  crowds: 

1.  Sects:  political, religious,  etc. 

2.  Castes:  military,  sacerdotal,  labor,  etc. 

3.  Classes:  bourgeoise,  peasants,  etc. 

The  mentality  of  the  community  is  a  very  dif- 
ferent thing  from  that  of  individuals ;  but,  as  funda- 
mentally it  always  comes  back  to  the  mentality  of  its 

[138] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

component  parts,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  men- 
tality of  individuals  is  often  very  greatly  modified 
by  the  very  fact  of  their  being  in  a  community. 
"  It  is  thus,"  said  Le  Bon,  "  that  in  an  assembly  of 
the  fiercest  partizans  one  will  often  find  inoffensive 
citizens,  who  under  ordinary  circumstances  had 
been  peaceful  notaries  or  virtuous  magistrates. 
When  the  storm  has  passed  they  resume  their 
normal  character  of  peaceful  citizens.  Napoleon 
found  his  best  servants  among  such  as  these." 
Thus,  as  the  same  author  says,  the  psychological 
crowd  is  for  the  time  being  an  individual. 

Many  authors  admit  that  the  community  always 
diminishes  or  lowers  the  mentality  of  the  individ- 
uals composing  it.* 

This  is  true  in  many  cases.  "  Thus,"  says  Le 
Bon,  "  the  decisions  of  general  interest  taken  by 
an  assembly  of  distinguished  men,  but  oj  different 
specialties^  are  not  appreciably  superior  to  the  de- 
cisions arrived  at  by  a  gathering  of  imbeciles.    The 

*  "  From  the  moment  that  individualities  come  by  degrees  under 
the  tyranny  of  a  community  one  may  be  sure  that  they  will  show 
a  certain  weakening  of  their  intellectual  power :  ...  a  hundred 
citizens,  all  of  superior  intelligence  and  forming  a  legislative  cham- 
ber, will  pass  measures  and  vote  for  questions  which  they  would 
be  the  first  to  denounce  if  left  to  themselves,  had  they  been  able  to 
•weigh  both  sides.  .  .  .  On  the  other  hand,  assemblies  often  dis- 
play a  collective  generosity  which  nearly  all,  if  not  all,  the  mem- 
bers would  have  been  incapable  of  showing  alone;  the  night  of 
August  4th  furnishes  a  good  illustration  of  this  law  "  (Cabanas  et 
L.  Nass:  Loc.  cit.,  p.  428). 

I  139] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

explanation  of  the  fact  lies  in  the  words  which  I 
have  undedined.  The  individuals  in  this  case  are 
not  superior  for  the  purpose  for  which  they  came 
together;  they  would  have  done  better  things  if 
there  had  been  a  reunion  of  men  of  the  same  spe- 
cialty, and  for  their  specialty  they  would  then 
have  done  more  and  better  work  as  a  community 
than  alone,  that  is,  if  they  had  been  well  directed^ 
for  the  whole  thing  rests  on  this.  The  same  crowd 
following  the  impulse  of  a  moment  would  cour- 
ageously put  out  a  fire,  and  heroically  defend  their 
country,  or  would  burn  a  factory,  or  brutally  mas- 
sacre a  falsely  accused  victim. 

"  The  crowd  is  the  people,  or  rather  a  fraction 
of  the  people,  in  delirium,  the  delirium  of  enthu- 
siasm or  delirium  of  fury.  The  crowd  will  carry  in 
triumph  the  man  it  has  just  insulted,  or  without  a 
moment's  thought  will  cut  the  throat  of  the  man 
it  has  just  been  praising.  Shakespeare  has 
painted  it  admirably  with  its  vicissitudes  in  'Julius 
Caesar.'  It  is  not  the  vile  multitude  of  which 
Thiers  spoke  so  insolently;  it  is  the  human  beast 
dismayed  and  disgusted  which  fear  too  often  rules ; 
that  wild  unreasoning  fear  which  sows  panic  in 
our  midst,  which  causes  the  assemblies  to  vote, 
and  arms  the  human  mob ;  that  fear  which  caused 
Cambon  to  say  when  he  summed  up  in  a  few  words 

the   gigantic   French   struggles :    '  we   are    afraid 

[140] 


CLINICAL   PROOF   OF  EXISTENCE 

even  of  ourselves,  as  in  the  night.' "  *  The  crowd 
is  often  semi-insane. 

In  the  same  way  "  it  is  this  that  causes  juries  to 
render  verdicts  of  which  each  jur^-man  would  in- 
dividually disapprove,  and  parliamentary  assem- 
blies to  adopt  laws  and  measures  which  each  one 
of  the  members  which  compose  it  would  condemn 
if  left  to  himself." 

But  we  must  not  take  this  literally  and  lay 
down  in  general  the  assertion  that  "  owing  to  the 
simple  fact  that  he  takes  part  in  an  organized 
crowd,  man  descends  several  degrees  in  the  scale 
of  civilization.  By  himself  he  may  be  a  cultivated 
individual ;  in  a  crowd  he  is  a  barbarian,  that  is  to 
say,  he  follows  his  instincts."  He  is  a  primitive 
individual.  This  is  often  true,  but  not  always; 
the  public^  which  is  a  sort  of  scattered  crowd,  is 
sometimes  a  good  judge,  as  good  as  each  of  the 
individuals  composing  it,  if  not  often  better  in 
certain  cases. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  two  opposite  and 
extreme  physiological  types  are : 

I.  The  leader^  who  not  only  does  not  permit  his 
mentality  to  be  affected  by  the  community,  but 

'  Jules  Claretie  :  Loc.  cit.,  p.  8. 

'See,  on  the  leader,  his  methods  of  action  and  his  prestige,  Le 
Bon  :  Loc.  cit.,  p.  105  (all  of  chapter  iii),  and  also  Pascal  Rossi : 
"Les  Suggesteurs  et  la  Foule,  Psychologie  des  Meneurs,"  pref- 
ace Morselli,  trad.  Atoine  Cundari,  1904. 

[  141  J 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

who  imposes  his  own  mentality  on  the  crowd,  and 
directs  it,  having  the  vocation  and  the  quaUties  of 
a  shepherd :  he  draws  the  majorities  and  makes  his 
flock  vote  according  to  his  wishes. 

2.  The  masses,  who  are  subject  to  the  various 
influence  of  the  community ;  alone,  they  may  be 
very  stedfast  in  their  conviction ;  but  an  article  in 
a  journal,  an  address,  or  a  meeting  will  make  them 
change  their  opinion  immediately. 

Between  these  two  extreme  types  is  the  inde- 
pendent man  who  is  neither  leader  nor  led,  who 
demands  nothing  of  communities  but  work  and 
knowledge,  and  who  judges  them,  rules  them,  and 
uses  them,  if  he  has  need  of  them,  without  allow- 
ing himself  to  be  influenced  by  the  crowd.  He 
does  not  worship  success,  or  the  opinion  of  num- 
bers ;  he  generally  sides  with  the  minority,  votes 
against  the  government,  and  is  occasionally  guil- 
lotined. 

This  being  the  case,  I  do  not  believe  (altho 
some  have  said  so)  that  life  as  a  society  or  a  com- 
munity, or  in  any  group  (political,  military,  or 
religious),  can  be  sufflcient  to  bring  about  true 
and  permanent  psychic  disturbances  outside  of  the 
usual  causes  of  mental  alienation.  Heredity,  alco- 
holism, and  syphilis  cause  more  insanity  than  com- 
munities. 

But  one  may  say  that  certain  of  these  occasions 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

of  mob  enthusiasm  are  just  such  as  the  semi-insane 
will  avail  themselves  of  to  manifest  their  psycho- 
neuroses  under  some  special  form. 

The  semi-insane  easily  fall  victims  to  psychic  or 
mental  contagion;'^  they  are  naturally  ready  to  ac- 
cept as  authentic  the  false  interpretations  which 
are  exprest  around  them.  Many  forms  of  delusion 
may  thus  be  communicated:  Meyer  has  quoted 
the  example  of  an  alcoholic  dement  who  came  to 
share  the  erroneous  ideas  of  a  patient  suffering 
from  a  polyneuritic  insanity.  But  the  most  con- 
tagious of  the  vesanias  is  the  delusion  of  persecu- 
tion; for  it  is  that,  says  Arnaud,  which  has  the 
greatest  appearance  of  reality  and  of  logic,  and 
which  is  the  least  contrary  to  accepted  ideas.  ^ 

This  latter  belongs  rather  to  insanity,  but  the 
semi-insane  often  presents  one  of  the  two  follow- 
ing types  of  the  same  general  order  of  ideas:  i. 
Megalomania,  with  ambitious  ideas  to  be  a  leader 
of  peoples,  the  maker  of  constitutions,  the  re- 
former, the  founder  of  queer  religions,  and  often 
the  cause  of  exciting  criminal  crowds;  2.  The 
timid  man  who  is  afraid  of  crowds  and  all 
gatherings    whatsoever,    the    melancholy    miso- 


'  See  Vigouroux  et  Juquelier :  "  La  Contagion  Mentale,"  Biblio- 
th^que  Internationale  de  Psychologic  Exp^riraentale,  Normale  et 
Pathologique,  1905. 

'  Anglade  :  Loc.  cii.,  p.  35. 

[143] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

neist,  presenting  what  Pierre  Janet  calls  social 
aboulias. 

9.  Disturbances  of  Sexual  and  Family 
psychism 

The  sexual  function  alone  is  not  the  only  factor 
making  for  the  conservation  and  growth  of  the 
human  species.  Development  and  education  are 
just  as  important  as  the  act  of  bringing  into  life 
a  new  human  being  who  is  incapable  of  living 
and  of  bringing  himself  up  alone.  The  human 
species  maintains  itself  and  grows  in  the  sum  total 
of  its  life,  that  is  to  say  physically  and  psychic- 
ally, only  when  all  its  individuals  fulfil  not  merely 
their  sexual  duties,  but  also  their  family  duties. 
The  family  ought  therefore  to  be  classed  apart 
from  other  communities  *  or  groups  because  it  is 
much  more  natural  in  its  point  of  departure,  and 
has  a  higher  object  and  a  very  superior  reason  for 
existing,  namely,  the  existence  of  the  species. 

I  therefore  divide  this  paragraph  into  two  sec- 
tions: I.  Disturbances  of  psychic  acts  relative  to 
the  sexual  life;  and  2,  disturbances  of  psychic  acts 
relative  to  family  life. 

'This  is  not  the  opinion  of  Spencer,  Mercier,  Morselli,  Seglas 
{loc.  cit.,  p.  169),  who,  on  the  contrary,  place  the  actions  concerning 
family  life  outside  of  the  acts  dealing  with  the  reproduction  and 
preservation  of  the  species,  and  in  the  acts  concerning  the  affect- 
ive relations  of  the  individual  to  his  social  environment. 

[144I 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

I.  Disturba7ices  of  Psychic  Acts  Relative  to  the 
Sexual  Life 

"Upon  this  subject  J.  Roux^  wisely  says  we 
should  be  brief  and  even  sparing  of  definitions,  ac- 
cepting obscure  conditions  as  certain." 

There  is  no  hyperdisturbance  of  love.  Disease 
may  exaggerate  sexual  instinct,  but  it  can  not  per- 
vert or  misconstrue  love.^  An  exhibitionist,  a  satyr- 
iasist,  or  a  nymphomaniac  can  not  be  compared 
to  a  true  lover,  even  altho  passion  may  be  carried 
to  a  very  great  degree  of  exaggeration.  There 
is  no  true  hyperphilism ;  ^  there  can  be  among  dis- 
eased characteristics  only  hypo-  and  paraphilics. 

^Joanny  Roux  :  "  L'Instinct  d'Amour,"  1904.  See  also  for  this 
paragraph:  Gaston  Danville:  "La  Psychologic  de  TAmour,"  Bib- 
liotheque  de  Philosophie  Contemporaine,  1894.  Paris,  F.  Aican; 
Ch.  Y€x€:  "L'Instinct  Sexuel,"  2ded.,  1902.  Paris,  F.  Alcan  ; 
Re'my  de  Gourmont :  "  Physique  de  TAmour.  Essai  sur  Plnstinct 
Sexuel,"  1903;  Chevalier:  "  L'Inversion  Sexuelle,"  Biblioth^que 
Scientifique  Judicaire.  Preface  de  Lacassagne,  1893;  Tarnow- 
sky  :  "L'Instinct  Sexuel  etses  Manifestations  Morbides."  French 
trans,  with  preface  of  Lacassagne,  1904;  Seglas  et  Arnaud :  Loc. 
cit.,  pp.  16S,  266,  573,  and  764. 

*  I  have  tried  to  show  elsewhere  that  love  ought  not  to  be  classi- 
fied with  sexual  instinct  and  to  refute  the  very  narrow  theories  of 
love  put  forth  by  Bain  ("Appetite  and  Personal  Charm"),  Sergi 
C  Stimuli  of  Reproduction  and  Sense  of  Touch  Combined  with 
Sense  of  Temperature  "),  Schopenhauer  ("  Manifestations  of  Sex- 
ual Instinct''),  Delboeuf  ("Unconscious  Need  of  Begetting  a 
Child"),  Roux  ("Sexual  Hunger"). 

'  The  tnystics  are  only  hyperphilic  as  far  as  the  cerebral  element 
of  love  is  concerned  (see  Georges  Dumas,  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes,  September  15,  1906). 

10  [  145  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

{a)  Hypo  Disturbances.     Hypophilism,  An- 
aphrodisia,  Sexual  Horror. 

This  group  includes  diminished  and  lost  sexual 
sensibility;  hypesthesia  and  anesthesia,  misogyny 
(dislike  of  women),  and  androphobia  (fear  of 
males). 

Genital  anesthesia  is  CdWo-di  frigidify  when  it  is 
congenital  and  affects  both  the  sexual  and  the 
psychic  act  (neither  erection  nor  desire) ;  impotence 
when  it  is  acquired  (sexual  abuses,  organic  nervous 
diseases),  and  chiefly  when  it  is  limited  to  the  sex- 
ual act  (no  erection,  or  persistence  of  desire).  Sex- 
ual horror  is,  on  the  other  hand,  more  often  psy- 
chic, but  accompanied  by  sexual  anesthesia. 

To  this  group  there  should  be  added  certain 
cases  of  erotomajiia^  or  morbid  platonic  love ;  sex- 
ual excitement  exists,  says  Arnaud,  "but  it  is  as  if 
transported  into  the  intellectual  order;  very  act- 
ively cerebral,  the  excitement  does  not  extend  to 
the  medullary  genital  center  (anterior  cerebrals  of 
Magnan).  There  is  neither  carnal  desire  nor  erec- 
tion."    These  are  truly  hypos. 

Inversely,  hypo  disturbances  may  bear  on  the 
psychic  phenomena  of  love,  to  weaken  them  and 
to  suppress  them,  without  suppressing  but  rather 
exalting  the  inferior  reflexes  of  sexuality;  these 
are  the  spinals  of  Magnan  (onanism). 

[146] 


CLINICAL   PROOF   OF  EXISTENCE 

{b)  Para  Disturbances. 

a  Sexual  Hyperesthesia.     Precocity  and  Morbid 

Permanence  of  Sexual  Instinct.     Erotic  Ideas. 

This  group  also  includes  priapisWy  satyriasis, 
and  nymphomania. 

In  a  lesser  degree  this  appears  as  an  amorous 
obsession^  and  certain  cases  of  the  need  of  loving 
and  of  being  loved  have  been  described  by  Pierre 
Janet. 

There  are  also  expansions  in  certain  individuals 
which  J.  Roux  calls  moral  exhibitionism,  and  "de- 
lusional manifestations  of  the  sexual  sense."  This 
symptom  corresponds  to  sexual  hyperesthesia,  at 
least  when,  as  Seglas  says,  "  the  patient  delights 
in  the  continual  representation  of  sexuality  and  of 
everything  that  seems  to  have  connection  with 
the  satisfaction  of  the  sexual  appetite."  There 
are  cases  of  erotomania  with  persistence  or  exag- 
geration of  sexual  desires. 

/?  Sexual  Perversions.    Paraphilism 

T\\^  perverts  can  obtain  genetic  satisfaction  only 
by  "  the  intervention  of  a  foreign  element  into  the 
genital  sphere,"  a  morbid  association  of  psychic 
acts  other  than  those  of  physiological  love.  This 
foreign  element  "  is,  moreover,  very  variable,  and 
more  or  less  remote  from  normal  excitation.     It 

[147] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

consists  sometimes  of  an  idea  or  mental  represen- 
tation, sometimes  of  a  sentiment,  sometimes  of  a 
material  object  whose  affective  presence  is  indis- 
pensable to  the  accomplishment  of  the  venereal 
act." 

In  this  group  Lasegue  in  1877  first  described 
exhibitionism;  the  irresistible  impulsion  to  ex- 
pose and  show  the  genital  organs  in  public ;  ex- 
hibition at  a  distance,  without  manipulating 
movements,  in  the  same  pkxes  and  at  the  same 
hours  ...  in  the  simple  cases;  there  are  also 
onanistic  and  manipulating  exhibitionists  (Mag- 
nan). 

Kraff  t-Ebing  has  classified  sexual  perverts  into 
fetishists,  masochists,  and  sadists. 

"  Fetishism  *  is  an  anomaly  in  which  an  object 
foreign  to  the  normal  genital  sphere  has  the  ex- 
clusive power  of  awakening  sexual  sensations  and 
desires,"  a  part  of  the  clothing  or  of  the  body  (night- 
cap, plait  of  hair).  The  masochisf^  is  "  an  individ- 
ual who  loves  to  be  subjugated,  humiliated,  and 
even  maltreated  by  an  individual  of  the  opposite 
sex,  and  for  whom  this  abasement  {passivity  q\ 
passivism  of  Stefanowsky)  constitutes  the  sexua; 
excitement  par  excellence,   if    not   the   only  ex- 


'The  word  is  Binet's  (F^r^). 

'From  the  name  of  Sacher  Masoch,  a  novelist  who  described 
these  diseased  conditions. 

[148I 


CLINICAL   PROOF   OF   EXISTENCE 

citant."  Sadism'^  "is  a  perversion  in  which  the 
genital  excitant  can  be  obtained  only  on  the  con- 
dition of  causing  or  seeing  suffering ;  the  suffering 
of  the  victim  awakens  voluptuous  sensations  in  the 
one  who  tortures  him."^ 

J.  Roux  incXudiCs phobop hi lia  with  this,  "a  dis- 

*  From  the  name  of  the  Marquis  de  Sade.  See  "  The  Count, 
called  Marquis,  de  Sade,"  Medicina,  1906,  p.  22. 

'"The  Strangler,  a  rival  of  Jack  the  Ripper  in  Paris.  The  ex- 
ploits of  a  satyrist.  For  several  months  past  numerous  women  in 
Montmartre  and  the  neighboring  quarters  have  almost  been  the 
victims  of  an  individual  to  whom  they  give  the  name  of  the 
Strangler.  This  is  the  manner  in  which  he  works :  When  he  finds 
himself  in  a  room  with  a  woman,  either  by  design  or  by  chance, 
he  tries  to  distract  her  attention,  he  then  suddenly  passes  a  neck- 
tie around  her  neck,  or  sometimes  simply  seizes  her  throat  in  his 
clasped  fingers  and  tries  to  strangle  her.  Each  time  the  victims 
of  these  criminal  attempts  have  been  able  to  call  for  help,  and  the 
sinister  maniac  has  been  obliged  to  loosen  his  hold  in  every  in- 
stance ;  but  he  has  escaped.  A  few  days  ago  he  brought  a  young 
woman,  B.  J. ,  in  a  room  in  the  Rue  des  P.;  this  time  he  was  armed 
with  a  knife  and  instead  of  strangling  tried  to  cut  the  throat  of  his 
companion.  B.  J.  had  time  to  ward  off  the  blow  with  her  hands, 
and  her  throat  was  only  slightly  wounded  ;  the  murderer,  arrested 
at  the  time,  gave  his  name  as  G.  His  statements  seemed  suspi- 
cious. By  means  of  the  anthropometric  tests  he  was  recognized 
as  L.  V.  D,  a  journeyman  tailor  born  at  Bruges.  He  had  been 
sentenced  sixteen  times  in  France,  several  times  for  similar  deeds 
of  sadism,  and  was  at  the  time  under  the  threat  of  expulsion" 
(Le  Journal,  May  26,  1906).  See  in  Le  Matin  of  October  16, 1906, 
this  other  statement  entitled  "  Maidens  Beaten,  a  Sacristan 
Whipt  Pretty  Penitents,"   which  ended  thus:  "According  to  the 

judge,  M.  Henri    Laurer,  it  is  probable   that   B will  not  be 

brought  before  the  tribunal;  they  will  shut  him  up  in  the  insane 
asylum  at  Coire,  and  that  will  be  the  end  of  it."  At  the  moment 
of  correcting  these  proofs,  all  the  papers  contain  dispatches  (veri- 
fying this)  which  describe  perversions  of  the  same  nature  at  the 
court  of  Annam. 

1 149  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ease  of  those  who  can  find  sexual  emotion  only 
through  fear."  This  is  a  form  of  masochism  with 
what  one  might  call  pathopJiilia. 

In  all  these  cases  of  perversion  there  are  always 
the  two  sexes.  This  is  not  the  case  in  bestiality 
and  lucrophilia} 

r  Sexual  Inversion 

As  a  transition  between  the  heterosexuals  and 
the  hoinosextials  (inverted),  one  might  place  the 
asexuals,  those  who  have  no  sex,  or  those  who  wish 
to  have  none ;  those  who  have  a  sense  of  shame  of 
their  sex  and  who  do  all  that  they  can  to  hide  it. 
They  adopt  the  gait  and  costume  and  manners  of 
the  other  sex.  In  a  greater  degree,  they  are  not 
yet  inverts,  because  no  one  is  inverted  who  wants 
to  be  so ;  but  they  are  subjects  who  desire  to  be 
inverts,  who  almost  regret  not  being  so. 

Sexual  inversion  (Casper,  Griesinger,  Westphal), 
"  Contrare  Sexualempfindung,  Uranisme "  (Ul- 
richs),  "consists  in  the  genesic  tendency  toward 
an  individual  of  the  same  sex  accompanied  by  a 
lively  sense  of  repulsion  for  the  opposite  which  is 
sometimes  insurmountable." 

Krafft-Ebing  distinguishes    psychosexual    her- 


'See  Belletrud    et   Mercier:  "  L'ASaire  Ardisson,"  Contribu- 
tion k  r£tude  de  la  Necrophilia,  1906. 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

maphroditism,   homosexuality,  effemination,  and 
androgyny.  .  .  . 

2.  Disturbmices  of  PsycJiic  Acts  Relative  to 
Family  Life 

The  word  love  is  generally  applied  to  all  the  af- 
fections which  bear  upon  those  psychic  acts  as  a 
whole  which  relate  to  the  race :  love^  meaning  the 
mutual  affections  of  the  two  sexes  with  the  idea  of 
generation  in  view;  family  love,  meaning  the  mu- 
tual affection  of  the  various  members  of  a  family. 
This  is  sufficient  to  separate  love  and  the  various 
forms  of  love  from  other  affections  such  as  friend- 
ship. 

In  family  love  we  may  distinguish  conjugal  \o\e. 
as  distinct  from  the  short-lived  love  which  may  be 
met  with  outside  of  the  family,  the  mutual  love  of 
the  founders  of  a  family ;  paternal  (or  maternal) 
love,  filial  and  fraternal  love ;  the  mutual  love 
of  the  heads  of  a  family  and  of  their  children 
which  is  normally  incompatible  with  all  sexual 
love. 

Seglas  thus  enumerates  the  morbid  acts  con- 
cerning the  affective  relations  of  the  individual  and 
his  family:  i.  Misogamy, misopedia, inadaptability 
to  the  reciprocal  obligations  of  family  life;  2.  Isola- 
tion, flights  and  vagabondage,  diminution  or  loss 
of  family  feeling,  exaggeration  of  these  same  feel- 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ings,  morbid  jealousy,  uxoricide,   liberaside,  col- 
lective suicide. 

B.  Diseases  in  which  Semi-insanity  May  Be  Observed 

I  will  first  reproduce  (pp.  no  and  in)  the  clas- 
sification of  psychopathies  according  to  Regis.' 

It  will  be  noticed  that  in  the  first  division  (psy- 
chopathic diseases  or  psychoses)  of  the  first  large 
group  (primitive  psychopathic  states)  the  various 
types  derive  their  unity  from  their  clinical  history 
(etiology,  symptoms,  evolution,  prognosis,  and 
treatment);  and  the  same  is  true  in  the  second 
division,  which  includes  the  psychopathic  infirmi- 
ties or  psychic  infirmities.  In  the  second  large 
group  (symptomatic  or  associated  psychopathies) 
the  individuality  of  the  various  types  is  based  upon 
the  nosological  unity,  or  the  unity  of  the  initial 
disease. 

In  various  proportions  one  can  find  the  semi- 
insane  in  almost  every  one  of  the  types  established 
by  the  psychiatrists. 

I  have  not  the  slightest  intention  in  the  world 
of  exhausting  the  subject  by  enumerating,  by 
means  of  examples,  the  following  types  in  the 
same  order  of  the  table  following  page  154. 


'This  whole  chapter  is  taken  more  or  less  from  this  very  excel- 
lent work   by  Rdgis. 


CLINICAL   PROOF   OF   EXISTENCE 

I.  Mania.    Systematized   Postmaniacal   Delu- 
sions 

Acute  mania  does  not  in  any  wise  belong  to 
semi-insanity.  But  when  it  passes  over  into  the 
chronic  state  the  ideas  become  less  fickle  and  a 
"  delusional  theme  "  may  be  organized. 

"  In  proportion  to  the  degree  in  which  this  re- 
mains alone  such  a  delusional  idea  may  finally 
become  more  and  more  definitely  synthesized  or 
bound  together  and  more  and  more  fixt.  The  in- 
dividual may  then  be  so  far  advanced  as  to  have 
systematized  delusions  of  persecution  or  inven- 
tion, or  more  probably  ideas  of  grandeur.  These 
are  what  are  called  postmaniacal,  secondary,  sys- 
tematized delusions." 

2.  Melancholia 

1.  The  preceding  cases  are  similar  to postmelan- 
ckoiic  systematized  delusions. 

2.  There  is  also  a  subacute  melancholia  which 
is  called  melancholia  with  morbid  conscience. 

"  More  often  this  goes  no  further  than  a  gen- 
eral condition  of  sadness,  depression,  inaction,  and 
helplessness.  The  patients  avoid  all  work,  all 
occupation,  and  all  society;  they  withdraw  into 
their  rooms,  where  they  sometimes  shut  themselves 
up  for  weeks  and  even  whole  months  at  a  time, 

[153] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

without  wanting  to  receive  anybody,  passing  their 
time  either  sitting  or  lying  down,  unable  to  make 
up  their  minds  and  come  to  any  decision,  or  to 
make  any  effort  that  would  lead  to  action/  .  .  . 
To  these  symptoms,  which  may  exist  alone,  are 
also  added  the  usual  unhealthy  preoccupations 
which  more  often  give  rise  to  fixt  ideas  or  obses- 
sional ideas  than  to  true  delusions.  The  more  fre- 
quent of  these  are  hypochondriacal  ideas,  ideas  of 
persecution,  religious  ideas,  and  scrupulous  ideas. 
But  in  spite  of  these  conceptions,  which  are  con- 
fined, for  the  most  part,  to  very  narrow  limits,  the 
subject  preserves  his  lucidity  as  well  as  a  knowledge 
oj  his  diseased  condition.  .  .  .  The  patients  are 
able  to  appreciate  their  affection  in  its  true  light, 
and  are  sometimes  even  able  to  resist  their  patho- 
logical tendencies." 

3.  Mental  Confusion 

As  with  mania  and  melancholia  mental  confu- 
sion is  a  generalized  psychosis.  But  in  certain 
forms  one  may  note  peculiarities  which  are  inter- 
esting for  our  study.  Among  these  is  "a  condi- 
tion of  toxic  dulness  of  the  superior  intellectual 
activity  with  a  more  or  less  complete  domination 
of  the  subconscious  or  unconscious  dream  activity. 

'  Simple  melancholic  depression,  moral  hypochondria,  misan- 
thropic melancholia,  anxious  melancholia,  aboulic  melancholia. 

[154] 


5J2 


A.-        rt     =        ii 

a. 

system 
elusions 

lancholi 
uor. 
a  (mela 

ncholia 

with  sf 

zed  del 

excitement), 
imple  chronic  man 
hronic  mania  witl 

tized  secondary  c 
emittent  mania, 
itermittent  mania 
ypical     acute    me 

anxious,  with  stii 
ubacute  melanchol 

cholic  depression 
mple  chronic  mela 
hronic  melancholia 

ondary  systemati 

sions. 

cfiu    KmH    (n    (Ti'-j       « 

<:-=i      «:-5>      e-ts  «s 


P  9J  ' 


M 


ai  0..O  -^  o 


(fl  C  o  >*rt 

^ ..  i  ^  E  ^'I 

lU  a3  iJ  u  c]_y  ^  -4-* 


SSc  J^^S  C^  C..O  S  ^  ^-^5^« 


73 
c3 


O 


1^ 


:uio;diuAs 


m.  MelanchoUc 
sanity    o| 


.  IV.  Mental  confusion.. . 


.  Typical  mentalconfusion.   ..     J  J 

.  Acute  mental  confusion ^ 

\  3.  Chronic      mental      confusion  \  ', 
[  (dementia  precox).  '1 

,  Essential  psy'    \ J  Progressive    systematized    psy-  ) 

chases.  \  \  choses.  i 

(i      I.  Disequilibnitions,    Superior  1  <. 
1  degenerates.  Degenerac'"*    ■  ' 

A.  Physic    infirmities   of  I    11.  Degeneracies,  lesser  dej 


.  Simple  or  asthenic. 

Debrious  (oniric deliriu 
.  Stupid  tstupidityl. 


Paranoid. 

Hypochondriacal  delusion* 
Delusions  of  persecution, 
li^oi     "     '  ■ 


Ambitious  delu; 


II.  Psychic  Infirnuties.. 


I.  Psychopathies  of 


II.  Psychopathies  of 


I  Alcoholism. 
I  Saturnism. 
Morphinism. 


Paludism. 
I.  Special.. 


nvoiution  (losses). 


properly  so-called.       t 
m.  Monstrosities,    inferior    de-  \ 
generates,  ~i 

'  Primary  dementia J 


.  Simple  degeneracy. 


.  Simple  dementia. 

.  Dementia  with  psycho: 


III.  Psychopathies  from  infections.. 


Pituitary,  suprarenal. 


(jrippe  or  influenzi 


Erysipelas. 

Cholera. 

Hydrophobia. 


1,  2.  Chronic \T\\ 


IV.  Psychopathies  of  nervous  diseases. 


Hemorrhaye    and    softening    of 
General  paralysis. 


Neuroses X  Hysteri 


Folder  for  Semi-Insane. 


To  be  inserted  between  pages  154  and  155. 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

Intellectual  torpor,  automatic  revery,  are  essential 
symptomatic  elements  of  this  condition.  ...  It 
will  be  seen  that  in  proportion  to  the  degree  that 
the  conscious  psychic  activity  is  dull,  the  dream 
activity  or  the  dream  state,  freed  from  its  control- 
ling elements,  comes  into  play  and  tends  to  pre- 
dominate." The  dream  delusions  (delirium)  of 
which  I  have  spoken  (page  112)  constitute  one  of 
the  clinical  forms  of  this  mental  confusion. 

4.  Progressive  Systematized  Psychoses 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  systematized  delu- 
sions that  remain  after  either  mania  or  chronic 
melancholy.  There  is  also  a  progressive  systema- 
tized psychosis  which  in  its  milder  or  initial  forms 
may  belong  to  semi-insanity. 

"  The  affection  more  often  starts  with  a  sense  of 
intellectual  discomfort  (Lasegue),  or  moral  hypo- 
chondria, that  is  to  say  by  abnormal  sensations 
which  begin  by  astonishing  the  individual,  drawing 
his  attention  to  them,  and  leading  him  to  analyze 
his  condition.  .  .  .  The  patient  is  disturbed  out  of 
all  proportion  to  the  condition  of  affairs ;  he  ex- 
amines himself,  scrutinizes  attentively  all  the  sen- 
sations that  he  feels,  and  believes  that  a  change  is 
taking  place  in  him  which  will  become  worse. 
The  thing  that  seems  the  strangest  to  him  is  that 
in  addition  to  the  physical  troubles  which  annoy 

[155] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

him  he  feels  as  if  his  intelligence  were  going  to 
pieces;  his  mind  works  in  spite  of  himself,  he  is 
no  longer  the  master  and  able  to  direct  it.  That 
automatic  part  of  his  being  sometimes  becomes  so 
strong  that  his  thought  is  externalized  and  seems 
to  be  more  or  less  consciously  projected  outside  of 
himself.  .  .  .  Soon,  by  a  natural  tendency  of  his 
mind,  which  differentiates  him  from  all  other 
aliens,  he  begins  to  look  for  the  cause  of  his  troub- 
les not  in  himself,  but  outside  of  himself.  .  .  ." 

From  this  moment  the  patient  no  longer  belongs 
to  us.     He  is  no  longer  a  semi-insane,  he  is  insane. 

5.    DiSEQUILIBRATION.      SUPERIOR    DEGENERATES 

The  degeneracies  or  infirmities  of  evolution  rep- 
resent the  anomalies  (rather  than  the  diseases)  of 
the  psychic  organ.  These  are  not  "simply  acci- 
dents of  psychic  life"  ;  they  are  "  real,  true,  origi- 
nal defects,  bearing  more  often  on  the  whole  race ; 
that  is  to  say,  they  belong  rather  to  families  than 
to  individuals."  Regis  divides  them  into  three 
groups  (see  accompanying  table). 

Disequilibrations  form,  so  to  speak,  the  transi- 
tion between  the  normal  state  and  the  pathological 
state.  They  are  the  real  border-land  in  which 
are  found  persons  who,  altho  intelligent  and  some- 
times even  brilliant,  are,  nevertheless,  lacking  in 
some  points,  and  who  have  certain  defects  which 

[156] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

may  be  expresl  by  a  lack  of  harmony  and  bal- 
ance between  their  various  faculties  and  propen- 
sities. 

In  this  domain,  which  is  really  the  great  field  of 
semi-insanity,  Regis  distinguishes:  i,  The  unbal- 
anced; 2,  The  original  and  eccentric. 

I .  The  Ujibalanced. — From  childhood  they  draw 
attention  to  themselves  by  their  precocity,  their 
quickness  in  taking  hold  of  everything  and  under- 
standing it,  and  at  the  same  time  by  their  whims, 
their  headstrong  ways,  their  cruel  instincts,  their 
violent  and  convulsive  attacks  of  anger.  At  the 
time  of  puberty  they  often  show  passing  attacks  of 
excitement  or  depression  with  exaggeration  of  cer- 
tain psychic  or  passional  tendencies  (mysticism, 
onanism,  vague  sexual  longings,  desire  to  travel, 
to  do  brilliant  deeds,  etc.).  When  they  become 
men  they  are  queer,  complex,  heterogeneous  indi- 
viduals, made  up  of  contradictory  qualities  and 
faults  and  a  combination  of  badly  proportioned 
elements.  They  are  often  as  highly  gifted  in  one 
line  as  they  are  lacking  in  another.  From  the 
intellectual  point  of  view  they  sometimes  possess 
the  faculties  of  imagination,  invention,  and  expres- 
sion in  a  very  high  degree ;  that  is  to  say,  they  are 
gifted  in  speech,  in  the  arts,  and  in  poetry.  The 
things  that  are  lacking  more  or  less  completely  are 
judgment,  right-mindedness,  and,  above  all,  con- 

[157] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

tinuity,  logic,  and  unity  of  direction  in  their  intel- 
lectual achievements  and  in  all  acts  of  life. 

The  result  is  that  in  spite  of  superior  quali- 
ties these  individuals  are  incapable  of  behaving 
themselves  in  a  reasonable  way,  of  regularly  prac- 
tising any  profession,  even  tho  it  be  below  what 
they  would  seem  to  be  capable  of,  of  watching 
over  their  own  interests  and  those  of  their  family, 
of  succeeding  in  business,  or  of  directing  the  edu- 
cation of  their  children.  This  is  so  marked  that 
it  seems  as  tho  their  whole  life  had  been  nothing 
but  a  contradiction  between  an  apparent  richness 
of  means  and  poverty  of  results.  They  are  the 
Utopians,  the  theorists,  and  the  dreamers  who  are 
taken  up  with  beautiful  ideas,  but  who  never  ac- 
complish anything.  In  addition  to  their  mental 
lack  of  balance  these  individuals  show  either  ex- 
cessive emotional  sensibility,  or,  on  the  other  hand, 
an  absolute  lack  of  sensibility;  they  also  show 
diminution  or  absence  of  affective  sentiments,  per- 
version or  lack  of  moral  sense,  aboulia  with  visible 
predominance  of  sponaneity  over  reflection  and 
volition.  Hence  arise  their  mobility,  their  insta- 
bility, their  irresolution,  their  alternate  attacks  of 
apathy  and  activity,  excitement  and  torpor,  their 
violent  fits  of  enthusiasm  and  their  depths  of  de- 
spair over  the  slightest  and  most  trifling  things. 

2.  Originals  and  Eccentrics. — In  a  greater  degree 
[158] 


CLINICAL   PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

of  lack  of  equilibration  these  patients  show  pecul- 
iarities and  eccentricities. 

"  These  people  are  what  the  public  would  de- 
scribe as  *a  little  off'  on  some  one  subject;  they 
either  have  some  peculiar  habit,  or  wear  some 
odd  style  of  clothes,  or  have  a  queer  manner  of 
wearing  their  hair,  or  of  walking  or  writing  or 
speaking.  It  may  be  either  a  strange  gesture,  a 
form  of  speech,  a  tic,  or  a  grimace.  The  eccen- 
tricity is  often  shown  by  an  imperious  or  obses- 
sional tendency  which  drives  the  subject  along 
some  intellectual  or  moral  line  of  action  to  the 
total  exclusion  of  any  useful  or  practical  occupa- 
tion; as,  for  example,  to  surround  oneself  with 
birds,  or  flowers,  or  cats;  to  collect  uninteresting 
objects,  particularly  articles  of  wearing  apparel, 
such  as  cravats,  hats,  footwear,  or  wrappers  of 
every  style  and  color,  or  to  be  absorbed  in  re- 
searches and  calculations  and  ridiculous  inven- 
tions, or  else  they  have  peculiar  emotions,  uncon- 
querable aversions  or  attractions  for  such  and  such 
an  animal  or  such  and  such  an  object.  Excess- 
ive prodigality,  sordid  avarice,  religious  and  politi- 
cal exaltation,  erotic  tendencies  in  every  form, 
perversions,  mystic  rites  of  the  most  peculiar  na- 
ture, spontaneous  lying,  a  spirit  of  intrigue  and 
duplicity,  a  passion  for  gambling  and  for  drink, 
hypochondria  and  misanthropy — all  these  are  tend- 

[X59] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

encies  which  are  frequently  found  in  those  indi- 
viduals whom  the  public  popularly  designate  under 
the  name  of  freaks,  crazy  fellows,  and  slightly 
cracked." 

They,  with  those  who  follow  immediately  this 
clinical  group,  are  sufficient  to  prove  the  existence 
of  the  semi-insane. 

6.  Degeneracies  Properly   so-called.     Lesser 
Degenerates 

I.  Simple  Degeneracy. — Simple  degenerates  are 
generally  noticeable  "  for  the  slowness  with  which 
their  intellectual  evolution  works ;  their  instruction 
is  rarely  complete,  and  they  are,  for  the  most  part, 
obliged  to  give  up  their  studies.  They  may  pos- 
sess, but  to  a  lesser  degree  than  the  unbalanced, 
some  brilliant  qualities,  or  distinguished  abilities, 
or  truly  artistic  nature,  but  the  thing  that  marks 
them  is  the  profound  lapses  in  judgment  and  moral 
sense,  a  mobility  of  ideas  and  extraordinary  senti- 
ments, an  almost  impulsive  leaning  toward  eccen- 
tricity, cheating,  excesses,  violence,  and  sometimes 
dangerous  acts.  They  are  combinations  of  good 
and  evil,  susceptible  in  the  same  degree  of  affec- 
tion or  hatred,  of  selfishness  or  generosity,  of  hon- 
orable or  malicious  actions.  They  are  sometimes 
charming  in  their  physical  and  personal  manner, 
with  a  quick  and  lively  wit,  ease  in  expression, 

[i6o] 


CLINICAL   PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

and  excellent  memory.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
they  reveal  their  inferiority  and  their  incapacity  in 
serious  things,  in  their  manner  of  living  and  of 
behaving  themselves."  In  a  word,  their  intelli- 
gence, as  Marce  has  said,  is  an  uistrument  which 
lacks  a  certam  number  of  strings. 

2.  Psychoses  of  Degenerates. — On  this  common 
ground  of  degeneracy  we  sometimes  see  developed 
insanities,  which,  at  least  in  certain  of  their  milder 
forms,  or  initial  periods,  belong  to  semi-insanity. 
I  will  quote  two  examples:  reasoning  systematized 
delusions,  or  the  persecuted-persecutors,  and  rea- 
soning psychosis,  or  moral  insanity. 

a.  Reasoning  Systematized  Delusions,  or  the 
Persecuted-persecutors 

"  The  delusion  is  a  connective  coherent  theme 
which  appears  to  be  true  according  to  the  false  or 
wrongly  interpreted  starting-point,  but  which  is 
eminently  logical  in  its  deductions.  ...  It  ap- 
pears, whatever  may  be  its  form,  as  claims  which 
are  more  or  less  chimerical  but  persistent  and  te- 
nacious, and  very  frequently  dangerous.  .  .  .  The 
insane  of  this  class  have  been  ranked  among  the 
reaso7ting  insane  on  account  of  the  persistence  of 
their  lucidity  and  the  logical  character  of  their 
dream.  They  have  also  been  called  persecutors  by 
reason  of  their  absolutely  characteristic  tendency 
II  [i6i] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

to  carry  their  point  by  the  most  violent  means. 
The  public,  easily  deceived  by  appearances,  often 
takes  them  for  victims  who  have  been  imtated  by 
injustices.  They  are  selfish,  proud,  wicked,  eager 
for  notoriety  and  scandal ;  their  delusion,  which  is 
the  more  dangerous  as  it  has  a  greater  verisimili- 
tude to  fact,  is  less  often  recognized,  and  drives 
them  to  the  most  outrageous  adventures  and  the 
most  serious  attempts."  Following  this  general 
description  Regis  studies  five  principal  varieties. 

Persecuted. — "A  soldier,  a  priest,  or  an  em- 
ployee may  be  the  object  of  a  reprimand  or  dis- 
ciplinary punishment  by  reason  of  his  lapses  of 
conduct  or  his  professional  breaches.  Instead  of 
accepting  the  punishment  his  pride  rebels  against 
it,  he  cries  out  against  the  injustice,  and  poses  as 
a  martyr;  this  is  a  type  of  the  persecuted  man,  but 
from  the  beginning  he  himself  becomes  dipersecti- 
tor.  He  protests,  recriminates,  implores  so  loudly 
and  so  strongly  that  his  position  is  changed  or  he 
is  discharged.  He  sees  in  this  only  a  fresh  source 
of  grievance,  and  his  pathological  hatred  feeds 
on  it.  Henceforth,  his  claims  know  no  limitation ; 
he  institutes  one  proceeding  after  another,  ad- 
dresses complaint  upon  complaint  to  the  authori- 
ties. He  draws  up  long  justificatory  documents, 
writes  to  the  daily  papers,  puts  up  placards,  and 

calls  the  attention  of  the  public  to  his  cause.    Ex- 

162] 


CLINICAL  PROOF   OF  EXISTENCE 

asperated  by  his  lack  of  success,  hard  pushed  by 
misery,  and  tormented  by  his  fixt  idea,  he  passes 
from  complaints  to  threats,  and  from  threats  to  an 
attempt  at  crime.  Sometimes  such  individuals 
draw  a  revolver  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  as  a 
Minister  or  the  Chief  Executive  passes  by,  declar- 
ing that  they  wished  to  attract  attention  to  them- 
selves, and  to  get  justice  (the  false  regicides  of 
Regis) ;  sometimes  they  kill  some  one,  either  their 
supposed  enemy  or  an  unknown  person,  with  the 
object  of  being  dragged  before  the  tribunals  where 
they  can  at  last  bring  their  grievance  before  the 
public.  .  .  ." 

The  Ambitious  ajid  Inventors. — The  character- 
istic of  these  is  "  that  their  claims  do  not  have  rep- 
aration for  an  offense  for  their  object,  but  the  rec- 
ognition of  an  invention,  or  fortune,  or  of  a  title 
for  which  they  are  contestants.  .  .  .  They  imagine 
that  their  invention  has  been  stolen  from  them, 
that  they  have  been  deprived  of  the  fame  or  the 
fortune  which  ought  to  have  come  to  them.  They 
persecute  governments,  administrations,  or  indi- 
viduals with  their  claims  and  threats." 

Litigants,  —  An  accidental  cause  of  delusion, 
says  Krafft-Ebing  (quoted  by  Regis),  "  is  a  lawsuit 
in  which  the  patients  have  lost  their  cause,  or  in 
which  their  pretensions,  which  in  their  opinion  are 
legitimate,  but  which  are  in  reality  audacious,  have 

[163I 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

been  rejected.  .  .  .  Instead  of  recognizing  that 
their  cause  was  destined  to  failure  because  of  its 
injustice,  the  patients,  full  of  defiance,  attribute  the 
cause  of  their  failure  to  the  partiality  and  corrup- 
tion of  the  judges.  .  .  .  Their  demands  for  redress 
become  more  and  more  voluminous,  their  requests 
and  their  denunciations  are  loaded  with  invectives 
and  insults  against  the  honor  of  the  functionaries. 
.  .  .  They  believe  themselves  to  be  martyrs  and 
dupes;  the  whole  judicial  proceeding  was  nothing 
but  a  vile  comedy.  .  .  .  They  make  assaults  upon 
the  court  ofificials,  and  call  the  magistrates  and  the 
highest  dignitaries  of  the  state  such  names  as  rab- 
ble, thieves,  perjurers." 

A  few  years  ago,  in  a  church  at  Montpellier,  a 
litigant  killed  a  notary  who  was  absolutely  innocent 
of  any  misdeed  against  him.  Another  instance 
of  this  kind  is  as  follows:  There  appeared  in  Le 
Matm  of  June  30,  1906,  under  the  title  "  Eighteen 
Years  in  Captivity,"  the  romance  of  Mile.  R.,  a 
young  woman  who  was  the  victim  of  a  notary,  a 
tribunal,  and  a  prefect,  and  who  was  shut  up  in 
an  insane  asylum  with  her  sister  whom  she 
saw  die  of  grief.  She  escaped,  was  shut  up 
again,  and  recovered  her  liberty  after  a  long 
martyrdom. 

Along  with  litigant  delusions,  and  as  a  sub- 
variety  of  the  same.  Regis  quotes  the  reasonable 

[164] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

delusion  of  dispossession  ^  (Pailhas,  Regis),  and  the 
delusion  of  claims  (Cullerre).  .  .  . 

The  Erotic  and  Jealous. — I  have  already  spoken 
at  sufficient  length  (pages  ^'j  and  88)  on  this  type, 
which  is  easy  to  understand. 

Patients  with  Mystic  and  Political  Dehisions. — 
To  this  group  belong  "  certain  badly  balanced  dev- 
otees, .  .  .  who,  under  the  influence  of  more  or 
less  imaginary  griefs,  accuse,  pursue,  threaten,  and 
sometimes  even  attack  the  priests,  the  religious, 
or  the  dignitaries  of  the  Church,"  and  chiefly  those 
"  ecclesiastics  who  rise  against  their  superiors,  and 
spend  their  lives  attacking  them."  Such  was  the 
Abbe  Verger,  who  assassinated  Mgr.  Sibour. 
Along  with  these  persecutory  mystics  there  are  am- 
bitious mystics, "  the  founders  of  sects  or  religions." 

The  political  persecutors  are  also  persecuted 
(the  lawyer  Sandon)  or  ambitious  (regicides). 
Regis  has  made  an  excellent  study  of  these  latter 
from  the  time  of  Jacques  Clement  and  Ravaillac, 
the  assassins  of  Henri  III.  and  Henri  IV.,  to 
Caserio,  Luccheni,  and  Bresci,  the  assassins  of 
President  Carnot,  the  Empress  EHzabeth  of  Aus- 
tria, and  King  Humbert. 

'  When  their  possessions  are  expropriated  these  patients  *'  refuse 
to  accept  the  verdict  and  consider  that  they  have  been  unjustly 
despoiled  and  are  still  the  legitimate  proprietors.  They  give  way 
to  more  or  Idss  violent  claims  in  the  defense  of  their  so-called 
rights." 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

b.  Reasoning  Psychosis.  Moral!  nsanity.   Perverts 

These  patients  are  distinguished  from  the  pre- 
ceding "by  this  fact,  that  they  only  occasionally 
have  delusional  ideas  properly  so-called,  and  that 
the  defect  in  their  organization  is  chiefly  exprest 
by  perversions  of  their  sentiments  and  their  affec- 
tions. These  are  individuals  who,  with  all  the  ap- 
pearances of  judgment  and  reason,  nevertheless  let 
themselves  go  in  a  perfectly  unconscious  and  often 
paroxysmal  manner  to  such  lengths  in  their  con- 
duct as  to  perform  inconsequential  and  extrava- 
gant acts,  and  even  truly  pathological  immorali- 
ties "  (the  morally  insane). 

From  childhood,  says  Arnaud,  "  they  are  jeal- 
ous, rancorous,  and  vindictive,  they  try  to  do  harm 
to  those  of  whom  they  feel  they  have  reason  to 
complain,  and  they  are  quite  capable  of  craftily 
and  patiently  preparing  their  vengeance  which 
they  will  wreak  with  ferocity.  They  delight  to 
torture  animals,  and  hurt  their  weaker  comrades. 
At  school  .  .  .  instead  of  working  they  spend 
their  time  in  tormenting  their  masters,  in  stealing 
from  their  school  fellows,  and  denouncing  them 
whenever  they  have  an  opportunity,  or  even  ac- 
cusing them  without  reason;  they  are  thus  sent 
away  from  all  institutions." 

Puberty  "  is  often  the  starting-point  of  a  verita- 
[i66] 


CLINICAL   PROOF   OF  EXISTENCE 

ble  sexual  excitement  appearing  as  impulsions,  and 
sometimes  even  in  the  form  of  perversions  and 
aberrations.  Later,  these  patients  give  themselves 
up  wholly  to  vagabondage,  gambling,  stealing,  alco- 
holic excesses,  and  debauchery.  They  perform 
their  military  service  in  a  deplorable  manner  and 
are  nearly  always  brought  before  a  court  martial 
or  the  disciplinary  body.  .  .  .  They  are  incapable 
of  following  any  steady  profession  or  of  earning 
their  livelihood ;  always  without  money,  they  draw 
upon  their  relatives  to  satisfy  their  impulsive  pas- 
sions, either  by  threatening  them  or  doing  vio- 
lence, and  sometimes  even  going  as  far  as  parri- 
cide. .  .  .  Nevertheless,  for  the  most  part,  their 
intelligence,  properly  so-called,  is  fairly  well-devel- 
oped and  cultivated,  and  sometimes  even  makes  a 
brilliant  appearance." 

These  are  they  whose  moral  sense  is  anesthetic 
(Ballet),  moral  daltonism  (Maudsley),  the  morally 
blind  (Schule),  the  moral  idiots  (Arnaud),  "the 
real  moral  degenerates,  in  whom  one  may  observe 
with  the  greatest  clearness  these  characteristic 
psychic  stigmata,  and  which  may  be  summed  up 
almost  entirely  in  the  words:  amorality,  inaffec- 
tivity,  inadaptability,  impulsivity." 

The  perverts  belong  to  the  same  group.*     They 

'  Marandon  de  Montyel :  "  Les  Pervers,"  Journal  de  Neurologic, 
19C36,  t.  xi.,  p.  i8i. 

[  167  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

have  already  been  described  by  Pinel,  1806,  and 
are  those  in  whom  Esquirol,  1836,  found  a  mor- 
bid trouble  which,  "  instead  of  bearing  on  the 
intellectual  and  moral  faculties  taken  as  a  whole, 
attacks  only  a  small  number  of  certain  faculties, 
and  does  not  touch  the  others";  in  others,  "the 
ideas  preserve  their  natural  connections  and  asso- 
ciations, the  reasoning  is  logical,  but  their  actions 
are  contrary  to  their  affections  and  their  interests 
as  w^ell  as  to  social  customs." 

Following  Morel  (1869)  Marandon  de  Montyel 
regards  these  subjects  as  abnormal  adzdts^  abnor- 
mal in  morality  and  will,  just  as  there  are  children 
who  are  abnormal  in  intelligence. 

The  pervert,  he  continues,  "  is  both  unstable  by 
reason  of  unbalanced  faculties  and  deficient.  He 
is  incapable  of  attention,  of  reflection,  and  of  per- 
severance in  anything  except  to  do  evil ;  for  when 
it  comes  to  wrong-doing  he  can  meditate,  perse- 
vere, and  display  great  resource.  .  .  .  Nearly  all 
are  idiots  of  volition^  according  to  Ribot's  witty 
and  apt  expression ;  their  intelligence  is  normal, 
their  passions,  appetites,  and  needs  are  normal ;  it 
is  only  volition,  or  strength  of  will  that  is  lacking." 
The  thing  that  characterizes  these  subjects  is  a 
"  notable  weakness  or  even  an  absolute  lack  of  the 
power  of  control  "  of  the  superior  brain  over  the 

passional  and  instinctive  desires.    "  The  result  is 

[168] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

that  they  are  the  slaves  of  their  passions,  their  in- 
stincts, and  their  necessities." 

However,  Marandon  de  Montyel  concludes  that 
the  pervert  is  not  insane ;  when  he  is  shut  up  in  an 
asylum  it  is  really  a  case  of  arbitrary  sequestration ; 
they  are  perfectly  well  aware  of  the  illegality  of 
such  an  act,  and  when  they  want  to  come  out  they 
know  how  to  appeal  to  the  authorities  and  do  so 
with  cynicism.  There  is  an  incalculable  number 
of  them  who,  without  shame,  will  tell  us  that  we 
may  treat  them  like  "  dirty  fellows,"  but  that  we 
are  wrong  in  declaring  them  insane  and  that  their 
place  is  not  among  madmen ;  and  in  speaking  thus, 
they  tell  the  truth. 

7.  Inferior  Degenerates,  Monstrosities, 
Imbeciles 

Imbeciles  have  only  a  more  or  less  restricted  de- 
gree of  intelligence;  it  is  with  difficulty  that  they 
can  really  learn  how  to  read,  write,  or  count;  they 
are  able  to  acquire  a  slight  and  superficial  acquaint- 
ance with  everything,  but  they  are  incapable  of  a 
correct  and  continuous  line  of  conduct,  and  of 
doing  anything  seriously.  However,  certain  of 
them  may  draw  attention  to  themselves,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  weak-minded,  but  to  a  lesser  degree,  by 
more  or  less  brilliant  artistic  aptitudes,  or  wonder- 
ful quality  of  memory,  or  imitation,  and  some- 

[169] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

times  also  by  a  certain  mental  vivacity,  a  quick- 
ness and  sharpness  of  repartee  which  always  give 
them  the  last  word,  and  brings  the  laugh  to  their 
side.  .  .  .  From  the  moral  point  of  view  the  de- 
ficiencies are  perhaps  still  greater  than  in  the  do- 
main of  intelligence,  and,  if  these  patients  are  able 
to  show,  in  various  degrees,  sentiments  and  affec- 
tions a  little  more  elevated,  it  is  chiefly  the  inferior 
sentiments  and  lower  instincts  which  rule  them. 
The  greater  number  are  vain,  gluttonous,  cowardly, 
credulous,  lazy,  irascible,  and  inclined  to  venereal 
or  alcoholic  excesses,  and  to  acts  of  violence 
(Marce) ;  nearly  all  give  themselves  over  to  onan- 
ism, and  some  few  even  to  practises  against  nature. 
At  certain  times  they  may  be  taken  more  or  less 
suddenly  with  attacks  of  depression  or  of  excite- 
ment, during  which  they  commit  chiefly  obscene 
acts,  or  give  themselves  up  to  burning,  thieving, 
suicide,  or  homicide. 

8.  Epilepsy.    Mental  Condition  of  Epileptics 

Epilepsy  is  a  type  of  disease  in  which  one  can 
sharply  distinguish  and  separate  the  periods  of 
insanity  from  those  of  semi-insanity. 

During  the  attack  (whatever  may  be  the  clinical 
form,  classic,  procursive,  etc.),  the  insanity  is  com- 
plete, and  there  is  no  need  for  me  to  describe  it 
here  any  more  than  as  an  epileptic  psychosis  (true 

[170] 


CLINICAL   PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

insanity  of  non-convulsive  or  convulsive  epilepsy, 
epileptic  dementia). 

I  need  to  mention  only  what  has  been  described 
under  the  name  of  the  mental  state  of  epileptics. 

According  to  Regis,  it  is  principally  in  the  char- 
acter and  mood  of  a  patient  that  these  peculiari- 
ties are  found.  There  are  two  classes  of  epileptics 
under  this  division.  On  the  one  hand,  they  are 
somber,  taciturn,  defiant,  suspicious,  always  ready 
to  fly  into  a  passion,  to  hurt  people,  to  become  en- 
raged, and  to  strike ;  on  the  other  hand,  they  are 
contrary,  obsequious,  obliging,  wheedlesome,  full 
of  effusion  and  gentleness.  But  these  differences 
refer  only  to  their  external  disposition.  In  reality, 
epileptics  are  all,  or  nearly  all,  irritable,  subject  to 
attacks  of  anger,  and  sudden  violent  and  furious 
transports  of  rage,  during  which  time  they  do  not, 
as  it  were,  belong  to  themselves.  This  irritability 
is  the  key-note  of  their  character.  Many  have,  in 
addition,  vices  and  perverse  instincts;  many  are 
greedy,  violent,  liars,  masturbators,  and  erotic. 
They  frequently  have  a  tendency  to  sickly  piety  or  a 
sort  of  excessive  religiousness  mixt  with  hypocrisy. 

9.  Hysteria 

There  is  a  hysterical  insanity,  which  is  a  com- 
plication, and  with  which  I  have  nothing  to  do  here. 
But  in  the  majority  of  non-insane  hysterics  there 
[171] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

are  psychic  stigmata  which  often  place  them  among 
the  semi-insane. 

In  these  cases  hysteria  is  nearly  always  a  psychic 
disease  (Charcot),  but  it  is  not  a  mental  disease;  it 
is  only  a  polygonal  disease,  a  disease  of  the  infe- 
rior psychism,  leaving  intact,  or  nearly  so,  the  su- 
perior psychic  functions. 

This  is  the  thought  which  I  have  developed  with 
Rauzier*  in  1894  in  defining  the  cortico-cerebral  for- 
mula of  this  neurosis.  The  hysterical  person  often 
assists,  with  the  remnant  of  his  conscious  person- 
ality, the  pathological  shamelessness  of  his  subcon- 
scious personality.  But  he  knows  that  it  is  patho- 
logical.    He  does  not  believe  that  it  could  happen. 

Pierre  Janet  understood  this  well  when  he  said: 
"  All  mental  diseases  can  not  be  confused  one  with 
another.  The  hysterical  patient  is  not  really  insane 
in  the  same  way  that  the  others  are."  Not  only  is 
he  not  insane  in  the  same  way  as  the  others,  but 
more  often  he  is  not  insane  at  all.  He  is  simply 
semi-insane. 

Regis  includes  in  this  group  of  elementary  psy- 
chic disturbance  of  hysterics  the  mental  state  in 
hysteria,  subconscious  fixt  ideas,  and  dream  hallu- 
cinations. 

'"Traitd  Pratique  des  Maladies  du  Syst^me  Nerveux,"  4th 
edit,,  1894,  t.  ii.,  P-  807.  See  also  "  Leqons  de  Clinique  Mddicale," 
3d  series,  p.  230,  and  "  Hypnotisme  et  Suggestion,"  p.  24. 

[172] 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

I.  Mental  State  m  Hysteria 

"  From  early  years  the  future  hysterics  are  for 
the  most  part  young  girls  of  great  intellectual 
vivacity,  extremely  precocious,  impressionable, 
coquettish,  tr^'ing  to  call  attention  to  themselves, 
ready  in  pretenses  and  falsehood,  and  subject  also  to 
nocturnal  terrors,  dreams,  and  nightmares.  Once 
hysteria  is  established  the  mental  and  moral  con- 
dition of  its  attributes  are  principally  characterized, 
on  the  intellectual  side,  by  an  excessive  mobility 
which  renders  the  patients  incapable  of  any  spirit 
of  consecutive  work  or  any  definite  idea,  and  that 
while  they  may  be  capable  of  displaying  cultivated, 
brilliant,  and  often  witty  intelligence  they  are 
absolutely  incapable  of  carrying  on  any  serious 
line  of  work.  With  that  there  is  a  very  manifest 
tendency  to  contradiction,  to  controversy,  to  par- 
adoxical ideas,  and  to  all  opinions  and  theories 
which  can  support  them  and  put  them  in  evidence 
and  also  to  imitation,  suggestibility,  and  to  auto- 
suggestion. Morally  the  condition  is  the  same. 
The  character  is  queer,  capricious,  fantastic,  and 
excessively  mobile;  the  sensibility  is  very  lively 
and  out  of  all  proportion  to  events ;  there  are  per- 
petual and  sudden  changes  in  the  feelings  and 
affections,  irrelevant  enthusiasms,  duplicity,  lying, 
a  propensity  to  dissemble,  deceive,  and  fabricate ; 

[173] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

cheating,  a  sudden  and  unseasonable  propensity 
to  commit  the  most  perverse  and  the  most  crimi- 
nal acts,  as  well  as  deeds  of  bravery  of  the  most 
brilliant  and  praiseworthy  character.  There  is  a 
constant  desire  for  change  and  for  making  a  show, 
to  occupy  the  interest  of  the  neighborhood,  the 
public,  and  the  press,  and  in  consequence  to  do 
things  theatrically,  or  to  weave  the  thread  of  some 
inextricable  romance;  there  are  habitual  dreams, 
images,  living  and  mystical  in  type,  erotic,  profes- 
sional, animal-like,  quite  analogous  to  those  of  al- 
coholics, and  often  lingering  during  the  waking  life 
(Pitres,  Escande  de  Messieres,  Tissie,  etc.).  All 
these  troubles,  whether  they  are  completely  united 
or,  what  is  more  frequent,  appear  only  in  fragments, 
reveal,  in  fact,  an  absolute  lack  of  equilibrium  in 
the  hysterical  person;  they  are  nearly  always  ex- 
aggerated at  the  time  of  any  of  the  great  events  of 
existence,  chiefly  in  the  important  processes  of  gen- 
ital life,  such  as  pregnancy,  menstruation,  and  the 
menopause.  In  man  they  are  ordinarily  associated 
with  symptoms  of  neurasthenia"  (Charcot,  Colin). 

2.  Subconscious  Fixt  Ideas ^  or  Polygonals^ 

"  These  fixt  ideas,"  says  Regis,  "  which  arise 
either  by  night  or  day  in  the  subconsciousness  of  the 
subject  and  which  are  not  associated  with  his  prin- 

*  "Le  Psychisme  Inf^rieur,"  p.  187. 
[174] 


CLINICAL  PROOF   OF  EXISTENCE 

cipal  personality,  and  which,  as  Grasset  would 
say,  are  'of  polygonal  origin,'  nevertheless  exert  a 
powerful  influence  on  the  psychic  life  of  the  sub- 
ject without  his  being  able  to  point  out  the  cause 
of  the  psychic  perturbations  which  are  produced." 

In  order  to  reveal  these  fixt  polygonal  ideas  one 
must  detach  the  inferior  psychism  by  putting  the 
subject  into  some  one  of  the  known  conditions  of 
subpolygonal  disaggregation,  that  is  to  say,  that 
his  fixt  idea  will  be  revealed  in  a  moment  of  dis- 
traction, or  during  sleep,  or  by  automatic  writing, 
or,  better  still,  by  an  attack  of  spontaneous  or  pro- 
voked somnambulism.  Hypnotism  is  the  best  way 
of  disclosing  them.  Pierre  Janet  has  given  a 
great  many  examples  of  such.  Thus  this  author 
cites  an  anorexic  who  threatened  to  starve  herself 
to  death,  and  of  whom  it  was  found  out  in  hypnotic 
sleep  that  she  was  haunted  by  apparitions  of  her 
mother  who  told  her  to  join  her  in  heaven,  and  to 
accomplish  this  to  die  of  hunger.  She  was  cured 
by  suggestion. 

These  fixt  polygonal  ideas  are  often  found  con- 
nected with  various  symptoms  of  hysteria ;  dyses- 
thesias, when  everything  has  the  smell  of  ether  or 
of  fish ;  hyperesthesias,  when  the  sensorial  atten- 
tion is  localized  and  concentrated  on  certain  points, 
or  when  contact  with  the  skin  is  possible,  or  in- 
supportable, according  to  the  point  of  contact.  .  .  . 

[175] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Many  tics,  choreic  movements  (coughs,  hiccoughs, 
laughing,  and  trembling)  represent  bad  habits 
formed  under  the  influence  and  depending  on  con- 
stitutional polygonal  ideas.  Thus  a  cough  will  be- 
come established  after  a  sore  throat  or  a  cold,  with 
barking  in  imitation  of  a  dog  or  as  a  jest. 

3.  Dreamy  or  Polygonal  Hallucinations 

These  hallucinations  are  produced  either  at  night, 
in  the  intermediate  condition  between  waking  and 
sleep,  or  in  the  dream  state,  either  by  day  or  in  an 
analogous  condition.  They  consist  chiefly  of  vi- 
sions, in  the  form  of  colored  moving  apparitions, 
but  often  they  may  affect  one  sense  only,  or  several 
senses  at  the  same  time,  particularly  the  genital 
sense.  To  this  type  belong  many  dream-like  mys- 
tic hallucinations  (ecstasy,  ravishment,  possession, 
and  incarnation). 

10.  Neurasthenia  and  Psychasthenia 

I  ought,  in  closing,  to  mention  the  disease  which 
Pierre  Janet*  has  described  under  the  name  of 
psychasthenia  and  which  is  a  depressive  psychic 
form  of  neurasthenia. 

According  to  Janet,  psychasthenia  is  a  psycho- 
neurosis  that  borders  closely  upon   neurasthenia 

'  F.  Raymond  and  Pierre  Janet:  "  Les  Obsessions  et  I2  Psy- 
chasthdnie,"  2  vols.     Paris,  F.  Alcan,  1903. 

[176] 


CLINICAL   PROOF   OF  EXISTENCE 

and  perhaps  on  certain  forms  of  paranoias;  it  is 
placed  between  epilepsy  and  hysteria.  All  these 
psychoneuroses  are  characterized  by  an  inadequacy 
of  cerebral  functioning,  a  vague  condition  of  dul- 
ness  or  of  intoxication.  ...  In  psychasthenia  the 
fall  of  mental  tension  is  much  more  sudden,  less 
profound,  and  more  prolonged  than  in  epileptic 
attacks;  it  never  reaches  the  point  of  narrowing 
the  field  of  consciousness,  nor  in  a  localization  of 
certain  points  as  in  hysteria.  In  thispsychoneu- 
rosis  the  mental  tension  seems  to  remain  general- 
ized and  to  determine  a  simple  lessening  of  the 
degree  of  perfection  in  all  operations  of  the  mind 
and  a  diminution  of  the  power  of  adaptation  to 
reality.  The  functions  which  are  most  disturbed 
are  those  which  bring  the  mind  into  contact  with 
realities — attention,  will,  feeling,  and  emotion 
adapted  to  the  present.  Other  functions  seem  to 
remain  intact,  and  they  thus  show  themselves  to 
be  inferior;  these  are  general  intelligence  and  lan- 
guage, exaggerated  and  incoordinated  emotions, 
badly  adapted  and  partly  automatic  movements. 
This  diminution  of  the  psychological  tension 
brings  about  mental  discomfort,  a  condition  of 
uneasiness,  feelings  of  incompleteness  which  in 
proportion  are  the  stronger  as  the  subject  the  bet- 
ter preserves  his  intelligence. 

Under  the  influence  of  this  exciting  inquietude 
12  [177] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

and  by  reason  of  the  suppression  of  the  superior 
phenomena  the  inferior  phenomena  are  greatly  ex- 
aggerated and  give  rise  to  tics,  to  motor  agitations, 
distressing  emotions,  and  a  great  variety  of  mental 
ruminations.  Finally,  ideas  are  formed  according 
to  the  circumstances  which  sum  up  and  interpret 
all  these  troubles,  and  the  ideas  thus  formed  con- 
tinue to  present  the  characteristics  of  the  prece- 
ding mental  condition;  they  are  permanent  and 
obsessive  because  they  summarize  and  express  a 
permanent  condition ;  they  have  no  ending;  they 
do  not  give  birth  to  true  delusional  convictions, 
but  they  preserve  the  form  of  haunting  dread  and 
ruminations.  .  .  . 

Dutil  ^  thus  sums  up  the  mental  neurasthenic  con- 
dition :  "  a  weakening  of  the  psychic  faculty  and 
principally  of  the  will,  a  habitual  disposition  of 
the  mind  to  sadness,  pessimism,  or  hypochondria- 
cal preoccupations,  a  defect  in  resistance  to  sen- 
sations and  moral  impressions,  an  exaggerated 
emotional  condition,  a  state  of  apathy  varied  by 
bursts  of  ill  humor  or  anger,  in  a  word,  a  conscious 
diminishing  of  moral  personality.  .  .  ." 

CONCLUSIONS 

In  this  long  and  yet  insufficient  chapter  I  have 
endeavored  to  establish  the  fundamental  thesis  of 

•Dutil:  "Traits  de  Pathologic  Mentale  de  Gilbert  Ballet,"  p.  842. 

[178I 


CLINICAL  PROOF  OF  EXISTENCE 

this  book ;  the  existence  of  the  semi-insane,  who 
without  equal  error  and  injustice  can  not  be  class- 
ified either  among  the  insane  or  among  normally 
psychic  individuals.  They  are  distinguished  from 
healthy  minds  in  the  fact  that  they  are  psychically 
diseased^  and  they  are  distinguished  from  the 
insane  in  that  they  preserve  a  certain  degree  of  con- 
sciousness and  of  reason.  Some  of  these  patients 
become  insane  later,  or  have  been  so  before.  Semi- 
insanity  is  then  only  a  period  of  their  history. 
Some  are  cured,  and  they  also  are  only  semi-insane 
for  a  time.  Others,  on  the  contrary,  pass  their 
whole  lives  without  ever  having  been  at  any  time 
either  wholly  rational  or  wholly  insane. 

It  is  difficult  to  indicate  for  such  a  vast  and  com- 
plex group  any  single  medical  characteristic.  We 
might  say,  however,  that  in  the  semi-insane  there 
is  a  weakening  of  the  superior  psychism  and  a 
non-controlled  functional  hyperactivity  of  the  in- 
ferior psychism.  It  is  thus  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
distinction  of  the  two  psychisms  (superior  and  in- 
ferior) seems  to  me  naturally  to  throw  light  uj^on 
and  to  facilitate  the  medical  study  of  the  semi- 
insane. 


[179] 


CHAPTER   IV 
Social  Value  of  the  Semi-insane 

I.  Generalities. 

Difference  between  the  insane  and  the  semi-insane  from 
the  standpoint  of  their  social  value. 

Thesis  to  be  established:  The  semi-insane  may  be  intellect- 
ually superior. 

II.  Psychic  Defects  in  the  Intellectually  Superior. 

1.  Socrates  and  Pascal. 

2.  Auguste  Comte  and  Saint-Simon. 

3.  Contemporary  Russian  Novelists:  i,  Gogol;  2,  Dostoiew- 

sky  ;   3,  Tolstoy;  4,  Garchine,  Pomialovsky,  Gorky. 

4.  Intellectually  Superior  French  People:    i,  Guy  de  Mau- 

passant; 2,Villemain;  3,  J.  J.  Rousseau  ,  4,  (idrard  de 
Nerval;  5,  Flaubert;  6,  Baudelaire;  7,  Alfred  de 
Musset;  8,  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre;  9,  Andre  Gill, 
Charles  Bataille,  Jean  Duboys;  10,  Salomon  de  Caus, 
Voltaire,  Moli^re,  Condillac,  Descartes,  Montesquieu, 
Bution,  Santeuil,  Cr^billon,  Ampere,  d'Alembert,  La- 
grange, Chateaubriand,  Enfantin,  Villiers  de  I'lsle- 
Adam,  Barbey  d'Aureviliy,  le  Sar  Peladan,  Cujas,  Bossuet, 
Bourdaloue,  Malherbe,  Napoleon;  11,  Zola,  the  Gon- 
courts;  12,  Arthur  Rimbaud,  Rend  Ghil,  Mallarmd,  lluys- 
mans;  13,  Balzac,  Diderot;  14,  Mmes.  de  Stael,  Rdca- 
mier,  du  Deffand,de  Chaulnes.de  Lamballe,  du  Ch^telet, 
de  Lespinasse ;  15,  Victor  Hugo,  Charles  Nodier,  Alex- 
andre Dumas_/f/j/  16,  de  Chirac,   Glatigny. 

5.  Intellectually  Superior  Foreigners  :  i,Tasso;  2,  Nietzsche; 

3,  Schopenhauer ;  4,  Swift;  5,  Hoffman;  6,  Edgar  Poe; 
7,  Thomas  de  Quincey,  Lord  Erskine,  William  Wilber- 
force,  Coleridge;  8,  Haller,  Jdrome  Cardan  ;  9,  Newton; 
10,  Zimmerman,  O'Connell,  Munkaczy,  Watt,  Manzoni, 
Oliver  Cromwell;  11,  Goethe,  van  Helmont,  Weber, 
[180] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Fechner,  Frederic  II.,  Schiller,  Paisiello,  Byron,  Sweden- 
borg,  Darwin,  Fries, 

6.  Some  Great  Musicians:    i,  Schumann;   2,  Donizetti;   3, 

Chopin;   4,  Wagner ;   5,  Mozart;   6,  Beethoven;    7,  Ros- 
sini ;  8,  Berlioz, 

7,  Celebrated  Epileptics  and  Suicides, 

III,  RESUME    AND    Conclusion.    Relations    of   Intellec- 
tual Superiority  and  Psychoneuroses. 


I.  GENERALITIES 

IN  the  preceding  chapters  I  think  I  have  shown 
the  legal  existence  of  the  semi-insane  in  neu- 
rological medicine,  and  to  have  indicated  by  the 
same  description  that  if  the  semi-insane  people  are 
to  be  distinguished  from  rational  people  in  that 
they  are  diseased,  on  the  other  hand,  they  are  not 
patients  like  the  insane,  and  that  one  must  beware 
of  the  widely  spread  error  which  confuses  the  in- 
sane and  the  semi-insane.  The  insane  man  is 
nothing  but  a  patient,  and  as  a  result  he  needs  a 
physician  and  a  hospital.  The  semi-insane  man,  on 
the  other  hand,  may  have,  and  sometimes  does  have, 
an  important  social  role  to  fill ;  he  has  a  social  value 
which  must  be  recognized,  and  of  which  it  would 
be  very  wrong  to  deprive  him. 

All  that  I  have  said  in  the  preceding  chapter 
shows  clearly  that  in  the  semi-insane  man  the 
whole  of  the  psychism  is  not  atrophied,  degener- 
ated, or  diseased.    There  are  inequalities   in  the 

development  of  his  various  psychic  senses.    Cer- 

[iSi] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

tain  of  them  are  weakened,  and  certain  others  may 
be  more  active,  and  even  more  brilliant,  and  render 
more  service  to  society  than  other  more  weighty 
and  better-balanced  brains  which  are  considered 
more  normal.  In  the  present  chapter  one  might 
quote  as  an  epigram  this  tirade  on  the  semi-insane 
by  Jean  Richepin: 

"Some  one  has  watered  the  seeds  I  have  sown, 
Not  in  vain,  not  in  vain,  have  I  passed  here  below ; 
From  the  visions  I  die  for  some  blossoms  will  blow. 
O  pitiful  men  in  your  valley  of  tears, 
Trust  the  beauty  of  life  and  banish  your  fears. 
These  flowers  from  Heaven  will  do  you  more  good 
Than  the  actual  blessings  of  every-day  food. 
Yet  you  weed  out  these  w'onderful  blossoms  of  life. 
That  is  why  in  a  world  full  of  evil  and  strife 
A  strain  of  rapt  madness  will  often  revive 
The  seed  of  the  gods  that  is  barely  alive. 
You  have  hounded  this  madman,  and  stricken  him  dumb! 
Never  mind,  he  has  sown,  and  his  harvest  will  come." 

If  in  certain  periods  and  in  certain  countries 
there  have  been  foolish  people  who  have  not  been 
locked  up,  and  whom  others  have  not  scoffed  at, 
but  who  have  been  surrounded  by  strange  vener- 
ation, and  who  have  been  looked  upon  as  superior 
beings,  beloved  of  heaven,  possest  and  inspired  by 
the  gods  (like  the  Pythian  Oracle  of  Delphi), 
these  were  semi-insane. 

The  epileptics  whose  disease  the  ancients  called 
morbus  sacer  were  semi-insane.  If  Erasmus  had 
lived  four  centuries  later  he  would  not  have  written 

[182] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

his  "  Eulogy  of  Madness,"  *  but  rather  a  "  Eulogy 
of  Semi-insanity."  It  was  semi-insanity  that 
Anatole  France  wished  a  little  grain  of  for  those 
he  loved. ^ 

The  insane  man  is  never  anything  but  diseased, 
harmful,  or  at  least  useless  to  society.  The  semi- 
insane  man  is  often  an  eminently  useful,  sometimes 
even  a  "  superman." ' 

This  is  the  idea  which  Tchekhof*  expresses 
("  ordinary  men  are  the  only  ones  who  enjoy  nor- 
mal health"),  and  Nordau^C'the  Philistine  is  a 
wholly  successful  fool "). 

The  thesis  to  be  established,  therefore,  is  this: 
The  semi-insane  may  be  superior  individuals  from< 
the  intellectual  point  of  view.    This  is  a  different* 

'Erasmus  makes  Folly  say,  in  her  descriptions  of  Love  and 
Wisdom  :  "  Women  can  only  give  pleasure  to  men  by  their  folly, 
that  all  feasts  would  languish  if  they  were  not  animated  by  folly  ; 
all  things  are  of  such  a  nature  that  the  more  they  contain  of  folly 
the  more  they  make  men  go  on  loving.  Everything  that  is  done 
for  man  is  full  of  folly." 

'"Nullum  magnum  ingenium  sine  mixtura  dementias  "  was  an 
adage  among  the  ancient  wise  men  (Lauvri^re). 

'"  In  the  realm  of  the  sensations  the  neurasthenic  is  superman." 
Arvdde  Barine  :  "  Essais  de  Littdrature  Pathologique  ;  I,  le  vin, 
Hoffman;  II,  I'opium,  Thomas  de  Ouincy  ;  III,  I'alcohol,  Edgar 
Foe  ;  IV,  la  folie,  Gdrard  de  Nerval."  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
November,  1897. 

'Anton  Tchekhof :  "Le  Moine  Noir,"  Revue  de  Paris,  1S97, 
vol.  iv.,  p.  449. 

'Max  Nordau  :  "  Ddg^n^rescence,"  Biblioth6que  de  Philoso- 
phic Contemporaine,  trad.  Auguste  Dietrich,  1894,  2  vols.  Paris, 
F.  Alcan. 

[1833 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

point  of  view  from  that  on  which  one  stands  when 
we  study  the  relationship  of  intellectual  superiority 
to  the  neuroses.* 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  present  chapter 
there  is  no  need  for  me  to  establish  the  fact  that 
intellectually  superior  people  are  more  often  neu- 
rotic than  mediocre  people,  and  I  thus  escape  the 
objection  which  Emile  Faguet  has  made :  that  ner- 
vousness appears  more  frequently  in  men  of  genius 
in  which  case  it  is  more  easily  noticed  in  them. 

This  matters  little  to  me  here ;  it  is  enough  for 
my  actual  thesis  to  show  that  many  intellectually 
superior  people  present  psychic  defects  which 
make  them  semi-insane ;  from  whence  I  deduce  this 
conclusion — the  semi-insane  often  have  great  social 
value. 

II.     PSYCHIC   DEFECTS   IN   THE  INTELLECTUALLY 
SUPERIOR 

There  are  many,  perhaps  too  many,  documents 
which  permit  us  to  establish  the  existence  of  more 
or  less  serious  psychic  defects  in  many  people  of 
superior  intellectual  qualities.  I  have  drawn 
chiefly  from  the  works  of  Moreau  de  Tours  ^  and 

*"  Superior  Intellectuals  and  the  Neuroses,"  Lemons  de  Clinique 
M^dicale,  4th  series,  p.  683. 

'Moreau  de  Tours:  "  La  Psychologic  Morbide  dans  ses  Rap- 
ports avec  la  Philosophie  de  THistoire  ou  de  I'lnfluence  des  N6- 
vropathies  sur  le  Dynamisme  Intellectucl,"  1S59. 

[184] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

of  Lombroso/  and  the  Chronique  Medicale  of 
Cabanes.  I  shall  also  quote  the  works  of  Reveille- 
Parise,^  Henri  Joly,'  Regnard,*  Wechniakoff,* 
Gelineau,'  Max  Nordau/ 

Many  of  these  authors  (Henri  Joly  and  Regnard 
chiefly),  and  quite  recently  Etienne  Rabaud,^  have 
insisted  on  this  very  sound  remark :  that  this  docu- 
mentation and  particularly  that  of  Lombroso  is 
not  sufficiently  controlled.  With  Lanson  we  can 
not  help,  in  fact,  regretting  "  the  lightness  with 
which  these  men  of  science  receive  facts  of  biog- 
raphy on  which  they  build  their  theories,"  and  we 


'  Cesare  Lombroso  :  "  L'Homme  de  G^nie,"  traduction  franqaise 
(2d  edit.,  surla  6eme  edit,  italienne)  de  Colonna  d'Istria  et  Calde- 
rini.  Preface  de  Charles  Richet.  Biblioth^qued'Anthropologieet 
de  Sociologie.    Also  an  English  translation,  "  The  Man  of  Genius." 

'  R^veilld-Parise  :  "  Psychologic  et  Hygiene  des  Homines  Livrds 
aux  Travaux  de  I'Esprit  ou  Recherches  sur  le  Physique  et  le  Moral, 
les  Habitudes,  les  Maladies  et  le  Regime  des  Gens  de  Lettres, 
Artistes,  Savants,  Hommes  d'Etat,  Jurisconsultes,  Administra- 
teurs,"  etc.,  1834,  2  vols. 

^  Henri  Joly  :  **  Psychologie  des  Grands  Hommes,"  2  edit. ,  1891. 

*  Regnard  :  **  Gdnie  et  Folic.     Refutation  d'un  Paradoxe,"  1899. 

*  Theodore  Wechniakoff :  "Savants,  Penseurs  et  Artistes,  Bio- 
logic et  Pathologic  Compardes,"  public  par  Raphael  Petrucci,  Bib- 
lioth^quc  dc  Philosophic  Contemporaine,  1899.     Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

*  Gelineau  :  "  Penseurs  et  Savants.  Leurs  Maladies.  Leur  Hy- 
giene," Preface  de  Cabanas,  1904. 

^Max  Nordau:  "Psychophysiologic  du  G^nie  et  du  Talent," 
trad.  Auguste  Dietrich,  Biblioth^quc  de  Philosophic  Contem- 
poraine, 4th  edit. ,et  "  D^gdnrfrescence,"  mSme  trad.,  meme  bibli- 
oth^que,  2  vols.,  1894.     Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

•Etienne  Rabaud  :  "  Le  G^nie  et  les  Theories  de  Lombroso," 
Revue  des  Id^es,  1905,  p.  649. 

[185] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

repeat  with  Paul  Bourget  that  we  can  not  help 
doubting  these  anecdotes,  but  I  believe  that  there 
is  a  group  of  observations  which  have  been  made 
with  a  care  sufficient  to  establish  the  thesis  which 
I  have  just  exprest. 

I.  Socrates  and  Pascal 

"  The  object  of  this  book,"  said  Lelut  *  at  the 
head  of  the  second  edition  of  his  book  on  Socrates, 
"  is  first  of  all  to  show  in  a  general  way  that  he  had 
such  a  quality  of  mind  as  might  last  through  a 
whole  life ;  to  appearances,  or  rather  to  the  realities, 
of  a  most  complete  and  powerful  reason  there 
were  joined  false  perceptions,  without  any  cause 
in  the  outer  world,  and  which,  for  the  individual 
which  experiences  them,  are  motives  of  determi- 
nation, identical  with  and  equivalent  to  percep- 
tions which  are  perfectly  real." 

"  Socrates  went  into  ecstasies  which  were  almost 
cataleptic  fits.  This  was  what  happened  to  him  at 
the  siege  of  Potidaea.  Soon  these  ecstasies  took 
on  the  character  of  more  decided  hallucinations 
which  were  shorter  but  more  frequent:  hallucina- 
tions of  general  sensation  sometimes  internal  and 
sometimes  external ;  hallucinations  chiefly  of  hear- 

'  L.  F.  Lelut :  "  Le  Gdnie,  la  Raison  et  la  Folic.  Le  Ddmon  de 
Socrate.  Application  de  la  Science  Psychologique  krHistoire," 
1.  ddit.,  1836;  2.  edit,    (avec  une  nouvelle  preface),  1855. 

[186] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ing  and  probably  also  of  sight.  Socrates  no  longer 
doubted  the  help  of  his  Demon  or  of  his  God.  .  .  . 
At  table,  or  in  the  streets  of  Athens,  or  in  the 
camps  he  would  suddenly  stop  short,  sometimes 
without  apparent  motive.  At  other  times  on  the 
occasion  of  a  sneeze,  either  by  himself  or  one  of 
his  neighbors,  he  would  act,  or  would  not  act,  ac- 
cording to  whether  the  sneeze  had  taken  place  on 
his  right  hand  or  on  his  left.  But  he  would  always 
stop  if  he  had  heard  the  voice  of  God.  .  .  .  These 
false  perceptions,  or  these  hallucinations  of  Soc- 
rates, which  he  took  for  the  inspiration  of  his 
familiar  Demon,  grew  in  proportion  as  he  advanced 
in  age,  and  his  belief  in  God  which  they  gave  to 
him  also  increased.  He  ended  finally  by  per- 
suading himself  that  by  reason  of  this  divine  exist- 
ence he  was  able  to  exercise  even  at  a  distance  a 
favorable  influence  on  the  young  people  who  fol- 
lowed him,  and  to  lead  them,  by  this  sort  of  moral 
magnetism,  to  that  reformatory  end  which  he  was 
striving  to  bring  about.  Socrates  thus  lived  dur- 
ing his  whole  life,  without  doubt  playing  the  part 
of  the  martyr,  but  none  the  less  the  exponent 
of  reason,  philosophy,  and  virtue  in  spite  of  his 
hallucinations." 

From  his  earliest  years  Pascal  *  "  could  not  stand 

'Lelut:  "  L'Amulette  de   Pascal  pour  Servir  h.  I'Histoire  des 
Hallucinations,"  1846. 

[187] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

seeing  water  without  falling  into  a  perfect  fit  of 
passion,  and  ...  he  could  not  bear  to  see  his 
father  and  mother  near  each  other."  At  one  year 
of  age  he  fell  into  a  languorous  condition  like 
that  which  one  has  described  in  Paris  under  the 
name  of  "  going  into  a  decline  "  and  almost  died. 
His  parents  were  persuaded  that  a  sorceress  had 
thrown  a  spell  over  him.  She  acknowledged  this, 
but  consented  to  "  cast  the  spell "  on  a  cat,  which 
she  threw  out  of  a  window,  and  it  was  killed. 
Then,  when  he  was  a  child  less  than  seven  years 
of  age,  the  sorceress  gathered  nine  leaves  of  three 
different  kinds  of  herbs  before  sunrise,  and  made 
a  poultice  of  them  which  they  laid  upon  Pascal's 
abdomen,  and  he  "  was  entirely  cured  and  began 
to  regain  his  good  health."  ^ 

"  At  ten  years  of  age,  on  the  occasion  of  a  noise 
from  a  plate,  he  created  a  sort  of  acoustic  theory; 
at  twelve  he  discovered  the  geometry  which  had 
been  hidden  from  him.  At  fifteen  he  wrote  a 
treatise  on  conic  sections,  which  Descartes  refused 
to  believe  was  the  work  of  such  a  young  mind. 
He  was  such  a  remarkable  prodigy  that  one  eve- 
ning, after  a  comedy  played  by  actors  of  his  own 
age,  the  Duchesse  d'Aiguillon  pointed  him  out  to 
Cardinal  Richelieu  as  being  already  a  great  mathe- 

'This  anecdote  is  related  to  show  the  neuropathic  heredity  of 
Pascal. 

[i88] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

matician ! "  At  the  same  time  his  sufferings  began, 
which  never  ended.  He  once  said  "  that  from  the 
time  he  was  eighteen  years  of  age  he  had  never 
spent  a  day  without  pain." 

At  twenty-four  years  of  age  (1647)  "he  was 
afflicted  with  a  sort  of  paralysis  from  his  waist 
down,  so  that  he  could  walk  only  with  the  greatest 
difflculty;  his  legs  and  his  feet  would  become  as 
cold  as  marble.  .  .  .  Pascal  was  nearly  three 
months  getting  over  this  disease,  which  seemed  to 
be  incurable ;  but  at  last  he  was  cured  and  made 
a  complete  recovery,  and  always  had  the  free  use 
of  his  limbs.  At  this  time  he  was  engaged  on  his 
'ten  years  of  work  and  glory,'  during  which  time 
almost  without  exception  all  his  works  in  physics 
and  in  mathematics  appeared.  But  during  all 
this  time  he  did  not  cease  to  suffer;  he  consulted 
several  physicians,  of  whom  Descartes*  was  one. 
He  'was  bled,  bathed,  and  purged.  .  .  .'  The 
principal  trouble  was  that  he  could  '  swallow 
nothing  liquid,  at  least  if  it  were  not  hot;  and 
again  he  could  take  it  only  drop  by  drop';  he 
had  'an  unbearable  headache,  excessive  heart- 
burn, and  many  other  ills.  His  health  became 
extremely  feeble;  so  that  they  thought  his  life 
was  in  danger.'" 

*  From  whom  we  learn  of  the  pretensions  of  science  and  the  prac- 
tise of  medicine  as  well. 

[1S9] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

In  October,  1654,*  there  was  an  accident  on  the 
bridge  at  Neuilly.  Two  of  the  four  (or  six)  horses 
of  the  coach  in  which  Pascal  was  seated  took  the 
bits  in  their  teeth  and  ran  violently  toward  the 
river.  Fortunately,  the  traces  broke  and  the  two 
maddened  horses  were  the  only  ones  to  fall  into 
the  river.  "  The  carriage  hung  as  if  suspended 
over  the  edge.  This  accident,  where  Pascal  came 
so  near  his  end,  made  a  terrible  impression  on  him. 
They  had  hard  work,  it  is  said,  to  bring  him  out 
of  a  long  fainting  spell." 

On  November  23,  1654,  at  half-past  ten  one 
evening  he  had  a  vision  which  lasted  a  minute  and 
a  half.  This  vision  probably  is  described  in  the 
strange  and  incoherent  writing,  with  unfinished 
phrases,  which  from  that  time  he  always  carried 
sewed  into  his  doublet;  he  himself  sewed  this 
mystic  amulet  (the  words  are  Condorcet's)  into  his 
clothing  every  time  that  he  changed  them.  "  From 
this  time  on,  his  days  and  nights  of  pain  were  al- 
most constantly  disturbed  by  the  sight  of  a  preci- 
pice which  would  suddenly  open  beside  him. ' 

At  thirty  years  of  age  he  became  a  complete 
valetudinarian,  or  rather  he  saw  his  troubles  con- 
stantly growing  greater.  But  with  all  this  he  pub- 
lished his  "Provincial  Letters"  (1656-57). 

'  He  was  then  twenty-nine  years  old. 
[  190] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

This  mingling  of  bursts  of  genius  with  mani- 
festations of  a  psychoneurosis  continued,  and  a 
violent  and  persistent  toothache  helped  him  to 
solve  the  problem  of  the  cycloide  or  roulette  (which 
cured  his  neuralgia). 

In  his  rough  manuscripts  ("Pensees")  "one 
could  see  how  his  mind  stopt  working  in  the  mid- 
dle of  an  idea,  his  pen  in  the  middle  of  a  phrase, 
sometimes  even  in  the  middle  of  a  word.  Pas- 
cal's infirmities  never  gave  him  a  single  moment's 
respite." 

Then  followed  four  years  (1658-62)  of  pain  and 
weakness ;  his  headaches  were  continual,  his  diges- 
tive difficulties  were  much  worse.  He  had  attacks 
in  which  he  lost  the  power  of  speech  and  con- 
sciousness. Sometimes  he  experienced  a  great 
deal  of  vertigo,  and  at  other  times  had  violent  con- 
vulsions. At  the  autopsy  it  was  found  that  his 
intestines  were  gangrenous,  and  "  within  the  skull, 
beside  the  ventricles  of  the  brain,  there  were  two 
impressions  like  the  mark  of  a  finger  in  wax,  and 
these  cavities  were  filled  with  clotted  and  putrefied 
blood  which  had  already  commenced  to  make  the 
dura  mater  gangrenous."  "  In  addition,"  said 
Le  Double,*  "the  medi-frontal  suture  was  still 
open,  a  mark  which  most  anthropologists  consider 

'  Le  Double :  "La  CrSneet  le  Cerveaude  Pascal,"  LaChronique 
Mddicale,  1901,  p.  671. 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

characteristic  of  superiority.  This  superior  char- 
acteristic is  still  further  confirmed  by  the  great  size 
of  Pascal's  brain;  the  substance  of  it  was  so  solid 
and  compact  that  the  physicians  thought  that  this 
was  the  reason  why  the  frontal  suture  had  never 
closed." 

2.  AUGUSTE  COMTE    AND    SaINT-SiMON.* 

Auguste  Comte,'  who  has  exerted  such  a  vast 
and  lasting  influence  on  the  philosophical  position 
of  the  savants  of  the  nineteenth  centur}',  was  un- 
doubtedly semi-insane  when  he  was  not  wholly  in- 
sane. He  would  go  out  and  not  come  back.* 
He  wrote  incoherent  letters  with  underlined  words 
and  significant  references.  While  he  was  taking  a 
walk  one  day  he  wanted  to  drag  his  wife  with  him 
into  the  lake  d'Enghien.  He  was  shut  up  in  the 
asylum  of  Esquirol,  who  diagnosed  his  case  as  an 
attack  of  mania  with  megalomania,  where  he 
plunged  his  fork  into  the  cheek  of  one  of  the 
guards.  The  day  he  went  out  of  the  asylum  he 
signed  his  marriage  contract  Brutus-Bonaparte 
Comte.  During  his  meals  he  would  try  to  drive  his 

*  Georges  Dumas:  "Psychologic  de  deux  Messies  Positivists, 
Saint-Simon  et  Auguste  Comte,"  Biblioth^que  de  Philosophic 
Contemporaine,  1905.     Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

'See  also  Hillemandet  Caban&s:  "La  Folic d'Auguste  Comte," 
Chronique  Mddicale,  1897,  vol.  iv.,  p.  36. 

*0n  April  12,  1826,  when  his  class  came  for  the  fourth  lesson, 
they  found  the  doors  and  shutters  closed. 

[192] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

knife  into  the  table  like  Walter  Scott's  High- 
lander, and  he  would  order  the  succulent  back  of 
a  pig  and  recite  bits  of  Homer.  Later  he  tried  to 
throw  himself  from  the  Pont  des  Arts  into  the 
Seine.  He  started  for  Montpellier,  but  when  he 
reached  Nimes  he  stopt  and  retraced  his  steps. 
His  whole  life  w^as  made  up  of  attacks  of  madness 
separated  by  long  intervals  of  semi-madness,  dur- 
ing which  he  wrote  and  published  his  work. 

Georges  Dumas  concludes  his  study  thus: 

"  Such  in  his  private  and  social  life,  in  his  work, 
in  his  love,  and  in  his  religion,  was  Auguste  Comte, 
the  founder  of  Positivism,  who  from  1824  to  1827 
tried  to  give  special  importance  to  matter,  and  who 
died  at  sixty  years  of  age  the  high  priest  of  human- 
ity. He  has  often  been  called  insane  by  the  vulgar, 
but  was  able  to  inspire  those  of  his  disciples  who 
were  above  the  average  with  an  ardent  faith  which 
neither  death  nor  fifty  years  of  time  have  been  able 
to  extinguish."  Stuart  Mill  puts  him  "  in  the  same 
rank  as  Descartes  and  Leibnitz."  Auguste  Comte, 
continues  Georges  Dumas,  "had  a  psychopathic 
temperament,  and  for  a  long  time  was  subject  to 
cerebral  symptoms."  He  was  a  mystic  with  "  hallu- 
cinations and  ecstasies."  As,  moreover,  he  never 
believed  in  the  objective  significance  of  his  halluci- 
nations and  as  he  "  controlled  them  "  (except  dur- 
13  [193] 


/ 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ing  his  attacks  of  madness),  all  this  "was  not 
enough  to  make  him  a  madman.  But  it  is  amply 
sufficient  at  this  time  (after  1826)  to  make  him  a 
demi-fou."  ^ 

With  this  "  Positivist  Messiah"  Dumas  compares 
Saint-Simon,  who  "proclaimed  himself  Vicar  of 
%/  God  and  Pope  of  Science,"  and  who  wrote :  "  At  the 
fiercest  time  of  the  Revolution;  during  the  night 
of  detention  at  the  Luxemburg,  Charlemagne 
appeared  to  me  and  said  that  since  the  beginning 
of  the  world  no  family  had  enjoyed  the  honor  of 
bringing  forth  a  hero  and  a  philosopher  of  the  first 
quality ;  but  that  this  honor  had  been  reserved  for 
my  house.  My  son,  thy  success  as  a  philosopher 
will  equal  those  that  I  obtained  as  a  commander 
and  chief,  and  he  disappeared."  He  sometimes 
went  even  further  than  this,  and  it  was  to  God  him- 
self that  he  "passed  the  word  of  command "  to  go 
and  develop  his  mind  according  to  his  program. 

Here,  again,  is  an  example  of  a  semi-insane  man 


'"Asa  specialist  in  mental  physiology  Georges  Dumas  has  very 
conscientiously  and  with  great  clearness  refuted  the  prejudice 
which  existed  among  many  ignorant  people  concerning  the  mad- 
ness of  Auguste  Comte"  (Lucien  Moreau  :  L'Action  Frangaise). 
I  like  better  the  appreciation  of  J.  Bourdeau  (Journal  des  Ddbats, 
Augusts,  1905)  concerning  the  same  book  of  Georges  Dumas: 
"Equilibrium  of  the  faculties  does  not,  as  a  rule,  lead  to  anything 
more  than  happy  mediocrity.  The  tendencies  of  genius  depress 
certain  faculties  and  exalt  others.  There  is  m  genius  a  certain 
neurotic  element  which  gives  it  force  and  impulsion." 

[194] 


SOCIAL  VALUE   OF  THE  SEINII-INSANE 

who  was  both  intelligent  and  remarkable.  Was 
he  not  so  when  he  wrote:  "Madness  is  nothing 
else  but  great  exaltation  of  the  soul,  and  this  great 
exaltation  is  necessary  in  order  to  do  great  things? 
He  only  enters  ijito  the  temple  of  glory  who  has  es- 
caped from  a  madhouse y  ^ 

3.  Contemporary  Russian  Novelists' 

The  majority  of  the  Russian  novelists  of  the 
nineteenth  century  whose  psychology  Ossip  Lourie 
has  studied  belong  to  the  same  group. 

I.  "  Gogol  does  not  know  himself.  Sometimes 
he  believes  that  he  is  called  to  a  high  prophetic 
mission;  sometimes  he  falls  into  the  depths  of 
humility.  Attacked  by  acute  morbid  mysticism 
during  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  he  died  mad,  or 
nearly  so,  and  left  a  great  work,  which  was  truly 
intelligible  to  the  Russians  only."  While  question- 
ing whether  it  would  not  have  been  better  to  seek 
a  chair  in  botany  or  pathology,  he  nevertheless 
asked  and  obtained  a  chair  of  Russian  history,  and 
immediately  conceived  the  idea  of  writing  a  uni- 
versal histor}^  for  which  he  was  in  no  way  pre- 
pared.    He  was  soon  obliged  to  hand  in  his  resig- 


*  The  italics  are  mine. 

'Ossip  Lourid:  "La  Psychologic  des  Romanciers  Russes  du 
XIXe  Si^cle,"  Biblioth^que  de  Philosophic  Contemporaine,  1905. 
Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

[195] 


v^ 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

nation,  and  believed  later  that  he  had  the  gift  of 
prophecy.  "  He  regarded  himself  as  the  most  in- 
teresting personage  in  creation,  the  Alpha  and 
Omega,  the  beginning  and  the  end." 

He  thus  wrote  "Cornelien  Scenes"  principally 
when  Tarass  Boulba  was  present  at  the  torture  of 
his  son,  and  encouraged  him  at  the  trial  of  his  life, 
and  congratulated  him  upon  the  silence  with  which 
he  submitted  to  the  most  atrocious  torments,  and 
said  to  him  from  time  to  time,  "  Well  done,  my 
son,  well  done  I " 

Trochine  ^  agrees  with  Ossip  Lourie  that  Gogol 
was  a  mystic,  but  he  does  not  consider  him  psycho- 
logically diseased.  I  think  that  from  the  medical 
point  of  view  there  could  be  no  question  about  it. 
Gogol  was  psychically  diseased. 

2.  Dostoiewsky  was  an  epileptic.  In  the  devel- 
opment of  this  neurosis  in  the  author  of  "  Crime 
and  Punishment"  this  horrible  disease  certainly 
played  an  important  role.  It  is  the  one  in  which 
he  hears  his  death  sentence  read  and  believes  that 
they  are  going  to  execute  him.  He  had  four  years 
of  hard  labor  in  Siberia,  in  companionship  with 
murderers  and  brigands,  without  any  intellectual 
companionship.  In  addition  to  his  epileptic  at- 
tacks he  had  mysterious  fears.     "  There  was,"  he 

•Trochine:  "  Le  Gdnie  et  la  Sanid  de  Gogol."     Analyse  d'0»- 
sip  Louri^.     Revue  Philosophique,  1906,  p.  344. 


SOCIAL  VALUE   OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

said,  "  a  frightful  fear  of  something  which  I  can 
not  define,  of  something  which  I  can  not  conceive, 
which  does  not  exist,  but  which  rises  before  me  as 
a  horrible,  distorted,  inexorable,  and  irrefutable 
fact."  This  habitual  condition  was  so  distressing 
that  his  epileptic  attacks  became  the  most  comfort- 
able moments  of  his  Hfe.  "  During  these  times," 
he  wrote,  "  I  experience  a  sensation  of  happiness 
which  does  not  exist  in  my  ordinary  condition  and 
of  which  I  can  not  give  you  any  idea."  "  You 
happy,  well  people,"  said  he,  according  to  Sophie 
Kovalevsky,  "  have  no  idea  of  the  happiness  which 
we  poor  epileptics  experience  a  second  before  the 
attack.  Mohammed  certainly  saw  Paradise  in  an 
epileptic  attack,  for  he  had  these  attacks  just  as  I 
have."  I  have  already  pointed  out  how  rigorously 
he  analyzed  the  character  of  Raskolnikoff. 

Dostoiewsky's  condition  (concludes  Ossip  Lou- 
rie)  never  went  as  far  as  dementia,  but  the  pro- 
gressive weakening  of  his  critical  sense  was  unde- 
niable. It  is  to  this  that  we  should  look  for  the 
cause  of  all  the  contradictions  with  which  his  life 
and  his  works  were  filled.  This  certainly  is  one  of 
the  characteristics  of  the  semi-insane. 

Loygue,*  who  has  thoroughly  studied  the  psychol- 

*  Loygue  :  "  Un  Homme  de  G^nie,Th.  M.  Dostoiewsky."  £tude 
Mddicopsychologique,  Lyons,  1904.  On  page  31  there  is  a  medical 
summary  of  the  subject. 

[197] 


THE  SE]\n-INSANE 

ogy  of  Dostoiewsky,  gives  the  following  informa- 
tion regarding  his  heredity  and  the  onset  of  the  dis- 
ease. One  aunt  had  "  a  very  weak  memory  with- 
out any  strength  of  character  or  resolution.  She 
was  susceptible  to  every  passing  influence.  She 
was  afraid  of  devils.  To  his  brother  Michael, 
Dostoiewsky  wrote  from  Siberia:  "  I  have  received 
your  letter.  I  am  afraid  that  your  attacks  will  be- 
come Hke  mine."  In  his  earliest  years  he  had 
nocturnal  terrors,  and  in  his  later  childhood  fre- 
quent hallucinations.  A  friend  of  Dostoiewsky,  in 
his  youth,  who  had  witnessed  his  attacks,  has  also 
stated  to  Melchior  de  Vogue  ^  that  at  this  period 
he  would  fall  in  the  street,  frothing  at  the  mouth. 

3.  Tolstoy  belongs  to  the  category  of  the  semi- 
insane  who  are  termed  "  originals."  At  eight  years 
of  age  "  he  was  seized  with  an  irresistible  desire  to 
fly  in  the  air.  This  idea  haunted  him  to  such  a  de- 
gree that  he  decided  to  put  it  into  practise.  He 
shut  himself  up  in  his  study-room,  climbed  up  to 
the  window,  and  made  the  movements  for  flying  in 
the  air.  He  fell  from  a  height  of  more  than  six- 
teen feet  and  was  sick  for  some  time  following." 

Another  day  "the  thought  came  to  him  that 
happiness  does  not  depend  upon  external  events, 


'E.    Melchior  de  Vogii^:    "Dostoiewsky,"    Revue  des    Deux 
Mondes,  January  15,  1885. 

[198] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

but  upon  the  manner  in  which  we  accept  them ; 
that  a  man  accustomed  to  bear  pain  could  never 
be  unhappy.  Therefore,  in  order  to  accustom 
himself  to  pain,  and  in  spite  of  the  suffering,  he 
would  set  himself  the  task  of  holding  a  dictionary 
on  his  outstretched  arm  for  five  minutes,  or  he 
would  go  to  the  barn,  and  take  a  rope  and  whip 
himself  on  the  back  with  such  vigor  that  the  tears 
would  come  to  his  eyes."  In  his  youth,  as  a  rule, 
he  "  never  wanted  to  do  anything  that  everybody 
else  did,"  and  he  chose  courses  in  the  Oriental 
languages,  only  because  everybody  else  preferred 
the  law.  One  of  his  aunts  wrote  to  him :  "  You 
have  always  wanted  to  be  taken  for  an  original 
being;  but  your  originality  is  nothing  more  than 
an  excessive  self-esteem."  Nevertheless,  on  enter- 
ing the  university  he  made  up  his  mind  to  know 
everything  in  the  second  year,  and,  after  taking  his 
doctor's  degree,  to  become  the  "first  savant  in 
Russia."  After  a  series  of  failures  "everything 
became  unbearable  to  the  master.  He  fell  ill,  more 
morally  than  physically.  At  last  he  gave  up  every- 
thing and  started  off  to  the  desert  among  the  Basch- 
kirs,  to  breathe  the  air  and  to  live  a  purely  animal 
life."  Having  met  the  three  daughters  of  Dr.  Berce, 
Tolstoy  "began  by  being  very  much  taken  by 
the  oldest,  then  he  thought  he  was  in  love  with  the 
second,  and  finally  he  fell  in  love  with  the  third." 

1 199] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

Later  he  set  himself  "  to  mow  hay  with  the  mou- 
jiks  ...  in  a  peasant's  blouse." 

At  this  period  "  which  was  the  most  glorious  for 
the  novelist's  talent,  and  the  calmest  in  his  inter- 
nal life,"  he  wrote:  "  However,  I  felt  that  I  was 
not  wholly  sound  in  my  mind  and  that  this  could 
not  go  on  very  long."  The  feelings  of  doubt  which 
he  had  known  from  his  childhood  led  to  the  idea 
of  suicide.  "  Everything  is  a  lie,"  he  cried,  "  death 
alone  is  true,"  and  he  resorted  to  various  devices 
in  order  not  to  kill  himself.  .  .  . 

Ossip  Lourie  concludes  that  "  Tolstoy  is  one  of 
those  rare  men  to  whom  the  English  aphorism, 
'They  are  certainly  cracked,  but  the  crack  lets  in 
light,'  might  apply."  In  a  word,  Tolstoy  was  a 
semi-insane  genius. 

In  his  autobiography^  Tolstoy  gives  some  addi- 
tional information  regarding  his  heredity.  His 
grandmother,  Pelagic  Nikolaievna,  was  the 
"daughter  of  a  blind  man."  His  grandfather,  Ilia 
Andreewitch,  was  a  narrow  man,  foolishly  lavish, 
passionately  fond  of  gambling.  He  gambled  con- 
tinually without  knowing  how  to  play,  and,  further- 
more, lent  to  every  newcomer  sums  of  money 
which  were  never  returned.     He  was  mixt  up  in 

'Comte  L^on  Tolstoy:  "Autobiographic,"  trad.  J,  W.  Bien- 
stock,  La  Revue,  1906,  p.  206.  Also  see  Ldon  Tolstoy:  "  Vie  et 
CEuvrcs.      Mdmoires,"  2  vols. 

{  200  ] 


SOCIAL  VALUE   OF  THE   SEMI-INSANE 

"  numerous  affairs,"  and  "  all  these  things  ended  in 
his  ruin." 

4.  The  grandson  of  a  "  hard  and  cruel  man  "  who 
"whipt  the  moujiks,  Garchine,  had  during  his 
schooldays  a  slight  mental  disturbance  from  which 
he  recovered.  He  retained  a  "  morbid  sensibility 
which  made  him  tremble  at  the  sight  of  the  slight- 
est suffering."  Later  his  mental  condition  became 
unbalanced,  and  at  thirty-three  years  of  age  he  was 
found  "dying  on  his  stairway.  .  .  .  Whether  he 
had  had  an  accident  or  it  was  suicide  or  madness, 
no  one  can  say." 

Pomialofsky  was  a  dipsomaniac  who  began  his 
debauches  with  brandy  at  the  age  of  eight  and  died 
an  alcoholic  at  twenty-nine  years  of  age. 

Gorki,  who  made  an  attempt  to  commit  sui- 
cide at  the  age  of  eighteen,  belongs  to  the  category 
of  the  semi-insane  of  which  I  have  spoken  who 
have  been  termed  vagabonds  or  wanderers. 

4.  French  Intellectual  Superiors 

I.  Guy  de  Maupassant,  that  fine  and  character- 
istically French  spirit  who,  like  Alphonse  Daudet, 
failed  to  be  admitted  to  the  Academy,  died  insane, 
after  having  been  confined  for  eighteen  months  in 
Dr.  Blanche's  Sanitarium.*     His  psychoneurosis 

'See  Cabanas:  "Guy   de    Maupassant  chez   le   Dr.  Blanche," 
Chronique  Mddicale,  1897,  p.  682. 

[201  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

dated  back  a  long  way.  For  the  past  ten  years, 
says  Mme.  Alphonse  Daudet/  "  one  could  notice 
from  time  to  time  the  changes  wrought  in  his 
physical  appearance  by  the  tormenting  ravages  of 
his  nervous  disorder  which  shook  his  very  being, 
causing  profound  exhaustion.  ...  It  is  possible 
that  his  visits  to  clairvoyants  and  similar  experi- 
ences were  due  to  a  perpetual  need  for  travel  and 
solitude,*  mingled  with  his  desires  for  a  brilliant 
and  worthy  life ;  this  was  perhaps  the  initial  stage 
of  his  depression,  the  early  fatigue  of  a  weakened 
brain,  already  prepared  for  the  final  breakdown." 
One  might  say'  that  the  roots  of  his  disease 
"  seemed  to  be  confused  with  the  very  qualities  of 
his  talent."  The  auditory  hallucinations  described 
in  "  Sur  I'Eau,"  as  well  as  the  hallucinations  of  sight 
in  "  Horla,"  *  prove  that  he  certainly  could  not  have 
had  a  brain  like  that  of  other  people.^    Guy  de 

*  Mme.  Alphonse  Daudet:  "  Souvenirs  et  Impressions,"  Revue 
de  Paris,  1897,  t.  v.,  p.  321. 

'Having  rented  a  yacht  on  the  Mediterranean,  Maupassant 
would  start  off,  then  suddenly  return  often  receiving  at  Cannes 
invitations  which  were  addrest  to  him  in  Paris. 

^Faverolles:  Gaulois,  October  12,  1897. 

*  The  mental  aberration  which  was  indicated  in  "  The  Horla" 
only  became  visible  to  all  eyes  on  the  eve  of  the  catastrophe  which 
destroyed  the  author's  reason.  £mile  Tardieu :  "  L'Ennui," 
Etudes  Psychologiques.  Bibliotheque  de  Philosophic  Contem- 
poraine. 

'Apropos  of  "  Pierre  et  Jean,"  Guy  de  Maupassant  wrote  to  Mau- 
rice de  Fleury,  "Introductions  h.  la  M^decine  de  I'Esprit,"  1897, 
p.  139:  "This  book  which  you  will  find  wise,  and  which,  as  I  be- 

[  202  ] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Maupassant  had  himself  confided  to  Paul  Bourget 
that  he  often  saw  his  double.  In  going  into  his 
own  room  he  would  see  himself  seated  upon  his 
own  sofa/ 

2.  Villemain*  had  ideas  of  persecution.  He  be- 
lieved that  he  was  pursued  by  the  Jesuits.  A  lady 
whom  he  was  visiting  said  that  he  was  "  constantly 
looking  under  the  sofas  and  the  chairs.  And  why  ? 
Because  he  thought  that  there  might  be  a  Jesuit 
under  his  chair  or  alongside  of  the  one  on  which 
he  was  seated.  He  suspected  them — but  it  is 
difficult  to  determine  whether  this  is  really  so — of 
wishing  to  make  him  a  rival  of  Abelard.' " 

Victor  Hugo*  has  admirably  described  a  visit 
which  he  paid  to  Villemain  in  1845.  He  "looked 
pale  and  used  up ;  he  was  drest  in  a  large  black 
redingote,  buttoned  at  the  top  by  a  single  button; 
his  gray  hair  was  in  disorder.  'If  you  only  knew,' 
said  he,  'what  plots  there  are  against  me.     They 

lieve,  rings  true,  I  could  never  have  written  at  all  without  having 
intoxicated  myself  with  ether."  Another  time  he  wrote  to  £mile 
Tardieu,  /oc.  at.,  p.  18:  "I  am  half  dead  with  fatigue,  brain  fag, 
and  nervous  disorders."     See  also  Gelineau,  loc.  cit.,  p.  178. 

'  Paul  Bourget :  "Two  stances  at  the  house  of  Mrs.  P.  at  Boston." 
Annales  des  Sciences  Psychiques,  1895,  v.,  p.  375. 

'  Max  Simon  :  "  Souvenirs  Litt^raires  de  M^decine,"  Chronique 
M^dicale,  1896,  1897. 

•According  to   Lombroso,  his  father  and  brothers  were    in- 
sane. 

*  V.  Hugo :  "  Choses  Vues,"  a  case  of  persecutory  delusions  de- 
scribed by  Victor  Hugo.     Chronique  M^dicale,  1902,  p.  170. 

[203] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

began  by  separating  me  from  my  wife,  then  they 
separated  me  from  my  children.  Now  I  am  alone. 
No,  I  am  not  alone !  I  am  not  even  alone !  I  have 
enemies.  They  are  everywhere;  here,  outside, 
right  around  me,  in  my  house !  They  say  that  at 
night  some  masons  climb  up  by  that  window  to 
sleep  with  me.  I  am  on  the  second  story,  but 
they  have  so  much  ill  will  against  me  that  at  night 
they  put  up  long  ladders  against  my  wall  to  make 
me  believe  this.  When  I  go  out  they  arrange 
everything  in  such  a  way  that  ever^^thing  I  look  at 
has  a  sinister  aspect.  I  meet  nobody  but  men 
buttoned  up  to  the  chin.  People  drest  in  red,  and 
in  the  most  extraordinary  costumes.  Women 
drest  half  in  black  and  half  in  violet  who  look  at 
me  with  cries  of  joy,  and  everywhere  there  are 
coaches  full  of  little  children  followed  by  other 
little  children,  some  in  black,  others  in  white. 
Listen !  you  are  a  man  nobler  than  the  rest.  Now 
picture  my  misery.  By  my  soul  and  conscience, 
I  am  not  sure  but  that  you  have  been  sent  here  by 
my  enemies  to  spy  upon  me.  .  .  .'" 

3.  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  started  with  a  neuro- 
pathic heredity.^  Four  generations  back  they  sold 
wine  and  were  hard  drinkers.  Then  they  were 
clock-makers,  singing  psalms  or  songs,  and  travel- 

'  See  Eugene  Ritter :  "  La  Famille  et  la  Jeunesse  de  J.  J.  Rous- 
seau," 1896. 

[204] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ing  everywhere.  One  finds  uncles  in  London, 
Hamburg,  Amsterdam,  Venice,  at  the  siege  of  Bel- 
grade, in  Persia,  in  America,  and  in  Germany. 
His  mother  began  the  romance  which  led  to  her 
marriage  when  she  was  eight  years  of  age.  His 
father  occasionally  had  ideas  which  "apparently 
emanated  from  the  moon."  He  wanted  to  give 
dancing  lessons,  altho  he  was  a  clock-maker,  and 
he  playfully  put  to  bed  the  owner  of  an  unmowed 
field  who  tried  to  hinder  him  from  crossing  it. 
Jean  Jacques  himself,^  after  having  read  inordi- 
nately, at  the  age  of  eighteen  set  out  with  a  model 
of  Heron's  circulating  fountain,  which  he  showed 
everywhere  in  order  to  gain  his  livelihood. 

He  was  successively  clock-maker,  mountebank, 
music-master,  painter,  and  servant,  and  then  fol- 
lowed the  paths  of  medicine,  music,  theology,  and 
botany.  He  used  to  meditate  bareheaded  in  the 
sun  at  midday.  He  fell  in  love  at  eleven  years  of 
age,  and  he  stated  later  that  he  had  spent  ten  years 
in  a  delirium  of  love.     He  believed  himself  to  be 


*  Lombroso,  loc.  ctt.,  and  Bruneti^re  :  "  La  Folic  de  J.  J.  Rous- 
seau," £tudes  Critiques  sur  I'Histoire  dela  Littdrature  Frangaise, 
1894,  p  325;  Moebius:  "J.J.  Rousseau,"  Krankheitsgeschiclite, 
1S87,  who  makes  of  Rousseau  a  "  reasoning  fool  with  delusions  of 
persecution  and,  in  all  the  force  of  the  term,  a  persecutory  perse- 
cutor," which  he  was  in  fact,  adds  Regnard,  loc.  cit.,  p.  132.  In  a 
work  on  the  deafness  of  J.J.  Rousseau  (Clironique  M^dicale, 
1900,  p.  5)  Rdgis  makes  of  him  "a  type  of  arteriosclerotic  neuras- 
thenia." 

[205] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

first  the  subject  of  everybody's  enthusiasm  and 
then  persecuted  by  all  the  world — by  Prussia,  by 
England,  by  France,  by  kings,  by  women,  by 
priests.  They  tormented  him  even  when  they 
conferred  benefits  and  praises.  He  would  sud- 
denly depart  from  an  inn,  to  flee  from  his  perse- 
cutors, leaving  his  trunk  behind  him,  and  would 
see  in  a  contrary  wind  a  new  proof  of  the  universal 
plot  against  him.  His  enemies  "  bribed  his  coffee 
merchant,  his  hair-dresser,  his  innkeeper";  his 
shoeblack  "had  no  more  shoe  polish"  when  he 
asked  him  for  it.  Men  even  refused  to  put  him 
in  prison  when  he  asked  them  to  do  so,  and  to 
further  his  persecutions  they  arrested  a  bookseller 
'*  whom  he  did  not  know."  He  dedicated  a  pam- 
phlet of  justification  "to  all  Frenchmen  who  were 
friends  of  justice,"  and  distributed  it  himself  in 
the  street  to  all  passers-by  who  did  not  seem  un- 
friendly. He  finally  wrote  "a  very  tender  and 
familiar  letter"  to  God  Almighty  and  placed  it 
under  the  altar  of  Notre  Dame  de  Paris.  Having 
found  the  gate  closed  he  saw  that  even  Heaven  it- 
self was  in  league  against  him.* 

Regis  thus  concludes  his  very  excellent  study  of 


'See  further  important  study  by  Cabanas:  "Cabinets  Secrets 
de  I'Histoire,"  3d  series.  Jean  Jacques  was  a  masochist,  an  ex- 
hibitionist as  R.estiv  de  la  Bretonne  was  a  fetishist.  Louis: 
Chronique  Mddicale,  1904,  p.  353. 

[  206  ] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Rousseau:^  "At  that  time  he  seemed  to  me  not 
only  to  be  a  great  writer,  but  an  exquisitely  tender 
nature,  a  being  essentially  good  and  gentle,  whose 
moral  weaknesses  arose  from  morbidness  rather 
than  from  vice,  and  who,  according  to  the  opinion 
of  Brunetiere,  owed  to  his  hypersensitiveness  not 
only  the  essentials  of  his  neurotic  vagaries,  but  his 
very  talent  itself.  .  .  .  Poor  Jean  Jacques!  To 
study  the  nature  of  your  being,  your  life  and 
your  body,  your  brain  and  your  heart,  is  to  see 
you  as  you  really  were,  the  most  humane,  the 
most  sensitive,  and  the  most  unhappy  man  of 
genius." 

4.  Gerard  de  Nerval,^  political  writer  and  poet, 
whose  neurosis  has  been  so  well  described  by  Ar- 
vede  Barine,  was  not  descended  from  the  Emperor 
Nerva  as  he  pretended,  but  from  "an  original  of 
unaccommodating  temper,  who  avoided  the  society 
of  mankind." 

He  himself,  from  his  youth,  was  a  mystic,  a  be- 
liever in  the  occult,  and  a  noctambulist.  He  was 
very  precocious,  having  been  in  print  six  times 
when  he  was  eighteen.  He  was  a  drinker,  a 
nomad,  and  a  bohemian.  He  was  subject  to  hal- 
lucinations.    He  would  be  found  on  the  street-cor- 

*"£tude  M^dicale  sur  J.  J.  Rousseau,"  Chronique  M^dicale, 
1900.  See  also  Courtade :  "La  Surdity  de  J.  J.  Rousseau,"/^., 
p.  90. 

*  ArvMe  Barine  :  Loc.  cit. 

[207] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ner,  his  hat  in  his  hand,  lost  in  a  sort  of  ecstasy. 
Gautier  said  that  he  seemed  extravagant  even  for 
one  of  the  Romanticists.  In  the  Tuileries  he  saw 
the  gold  fish  in  the  big  fountain  putting  their  heads 
out  of  the  water  trying  to  entice  him  to  follow  them 
to  the  bottom.  The  Queen  of  Sheba  was  waiting 
for  him,  they  said.  He  was  found  at  the  Palais 
Royal  dragging  a  live  lobster  along  at  the  end  of 
a  blue  ribbon ;  then,  as  it  was  allowable  to  take  a 
dog  or  a  lion  out  for  a  walk,  he  was  astonished 
that  the  physicians  should  hinder  him  from  airing 
a  lobster — such  a  quiet,  serious  animal,  that  knew 
all  the  secrets  of  the  deep  sea,  and  that  never 
barked.  He  tried  to  fly  Hke  the  birds,  and  one 
day,  at  a  moment,  in  one  of  the  streets  of  Paris, 
when  he  waited  with  his  arms  spread  out  for  his 
soul  to  mount  to  a  star,  he  was  gathered  in  by  a 
gendarme  "  because  he  had  prepared  for  this  as- 
cension by  taking  off  his  terrestrial  garments." 
Not  knowing  how  to  collect  a  bill,  he  let  it  be  pre- 
sented by  a  big  man  from  the  market-place: 
"  These  great,  big  men  have  a  terrible  way  of  pre- 
senting bills."  One  day  he  slipt  into  the  kitchen 
of  Mr.  Buloz  at  a  time  when  there  was  no  one 
there.  He  opened  all  the  water  faucets  and  ran 
away  enchanted  by  his  exploit.  He  saw  "  a  black 
sun  and  the  empty  sky  and  a  red  ball  of  blood  over 
the  Tuileries."  He  thought  he  had  "  some  influence 

[208] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

on  the  course  of  the  moon,"  and  he  used  to  lay  his 
hands  on  the  sick. 

He  was  confined  several  times  in  the  sanitarium 
of  Dr.  Blanche,  and  when  he  was  better  he  queried 
"whether  he  had  not  undergone  a  certain  deterio- 
ration in  recovering  what  is  commonly  called 
reason."  *  At  his  solicitation  a  literary  society  un- 
fortunately obtained  his  dismissal  from  an  asylum. 
He  went  out  and  hanged  himself  in  a  low  public 
house,  a  furnished  one  at  which  one  pays  two  cents 
a  night  in  the  Rue  de  la  Vieille  Lanterne.  He 
used  an  apron-string  which  he  represented  as  the 
girdle  of  Mme.  de  Maintenon  when  she  played  the 
part  of  Esther  at  Saint-Cyr,  or  the  garter  of  the 
Queen  of  Sheba. 

5.  Flaubert  was  an  epileptic  or  a  hystero-epilep- 
tic.  Maxime  Du  Camp^  has  thus  described  this 
neurotic  individual :  "  Before  his  twenty-second 
year  had  slid  from  the  eternal  hour-glass  an  impla- 
cable disease  had  seized  him  and,  as  it  were,  made 
him  its   own  by  giving  him  certain  peculiarities 

*  Another  poet,  Charles  Lamb,  had  declared  several  years  pre- 
viously that  he  was  to  be  envied  for  the  days  that  he  had  passed 
in  an  insane  asylum,  and  he  wrote  to  Coleridge,  "Do  not  dream 
that  you  have  tasted  all  the  splendor  and  transport  of  imaginatioi 
if  you  have  never  been  mad."  The  hero  of  Tchekov's  "  Moine 
Noire  "  loved  his  psychosis,  and  having  been  temporarily  cured, 
he  bitterly  reproached  the  physician  who  by  his  aid  had  thrust  him 
back  again  into  the  vulgar  crowd  of  the  healthy-minded. 

'Maxime  du  Camp:  "  Souvenirs  Litt^raires,"  Paris,  1892. 
14  [  209  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

which  would  have  surprized  those  by  whom  he  was 
only  superficially  known.  The  sacred  disease,  the 
great  neurosis  which  Paracelsus  has  called  the 
*  human  earthquake,'  had  struck  Gustave  and  had 
thrown  him  to  the  ground.  Often,  helpless  and 
dismayed,  have  I  been  present  at  these  attacks, 
which  were  frightful.  They  always  developed  in 
the  same  manner  and  were  preceded  by  the  same 
phenomena.  All  at  once  without  any  apparent 
reason  Gustave  would  throw  up  his  head  and  be- 
come very  pale.  He  had  felt  the  aura.  His  look 
was  full  of  anguish.  He  would  say,  '  I  have  a  flame 
in  my  left  eye  ';  then  a  few  seconds  later,  'I  have 
a  fiame  in  my  right  eye ;  everything  seems  to  me  to 
be  the  color  of  gold.'  This  singular  condition 
would  sometimes  persist  for  several  minutes. 
Then  his  visage  would  grow  pale  again  and  take 
on  a  desperate  expression ;  he  would  walk  about 
rapidly;  then  he  would  fairly  run  to  his  bed  and 
stretch  himself  out  on  it  dull  and  sinister  as  if  he 
were  lying  alive  in  a  coffin.  Then  he  would  cry 
out:  'I  have  hold  of  the  reins!  here  is  the  carrier! 
I  hear  the  bells !  Ah  1 1  see  the  lantern  of  the  inn ! ' ' 
Then  he  would  utter  a  cry  whose  piercing  ac- 
cent still  vibrates  in  my  ears,  and  a  convulsion 

•The  first  attack  took  place  one  night,  "  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Bourg-Achard,  at  the  moment  when  a  post-carrier  was  passing  to 
the  left  of  the  cabriolet,  and  when  on  the  right  the  lights  of  a 
lonely  inn  were  perceptible  in  the  distance." 

[210] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

would  then  come  on.  This  paroxysm,  in  which 
his  entire  body  trembled,  was  followed  by  a  deep 
sleep  and  profound  exhaustion  which  lasted  for 
several  days.  This  neurosis,  moreover,  began 
very  early  in  life  and  seems  to  have  caused  his 
death.  This  may  be  deduced  from  two  notes  of 
the  Goncourts '  to  which  Max  Simon  and  Cabanes 
have  directed  attention. 

"  Flaubert  tells  us  that  when  he  was  a  child  he 
would  sit  for  hours  deeply  immersed  in  his  book, 
biting  his  tongue  and  twisting  a  lock  of  hair  about 
his  fingers ;  that  he  would  finally  tumble  over  on 
the  ground.  One  day  he  cut  his  nose  while  falling 
against  a  glass  pane  of  the  bookcase.  This  morn- 
ing Pouchet  led  me  into  a  narrow  alley  and  told 
me  he  did  not  die  of  apoplexy ;  he  died  in  an  attack 
of  epilepsy;  he  had  been  sixteen  years  without 
having  had  any  attacks,  but  on  Saturday  he  died 
of  a  seizure  of  congestive  epilepsy.  Yes,  with  all 
the  symptoms,  even  froth  at  the  mouth.  Just 
think !  his  niece  wanted  to  have  a  cast  made  of  his 
hand,  but  they  were  not  able  to  take  it,  it  was  so 
terribly  contracted."  ^ 

Binet   Sangle'  maintains  the  diagnosis  of  epi- 

'Goncourt:  "Journal  des  Goncourts,"  t.  ii.,p.  80;  t.  vi.,  p.  114. 

'Michaut:  Chronique  Mddicale,  1900,  does  not  believe  that 
Flaubert  could  have  died  in  such  a  long-delayed  attack  of  epilepsy. 
See  the  reply  to  Gelineau,  ibid.,  p.  670;  Michaut,  ibid.,  p.  703. 

'"The  Epilepsy  of  Gustave  Flaubert,"  Chronique  Mddicale, 
1900,  p.  641  ;  1901,  p.  62. 

[211] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

lepsy  for  Flaubert's  neurosis.  Felix  Regnault' 
prefers  that  of  hysteria.  Rene  Dusmenil,^  who  has 
taken  up  the  whole  question,  concludes  that  Flau- 
bert suffered  from  hystero-neurasthenia  and  attrib- 
utes his  death  to  a  hemorrhage  into  the  ventricle 
of  the  brain.  At  all  events,  Flaubert  undoubtedly 
suffered  from  a  psychoneurosis.  When  he  de- 
scribed the  poisoning  of  Mme.  Bovary  he  felt  the 
taste  of  arsenic  upon  his  tongue  and  he  was  himself 
poisoned  to  the  point  of  vomiting.'  "  When  I  write 
a  novel,"  he  says,*  "  I  have  the  thought  to  render  a 
coloration,  a  nuance.  For  instance,  in  a  Cartha- 
genian  romance  I  intend  to  render  something 
in  purple.  In  'Madame  Bovary'  I  had  only  the 
idea  of  a  tone,  this  color  of  the  moldiness  of  a  wood- 
louse.  The  history,  the  adventure,  of  a  romance, 
that  is  to  me  all  the  same."  Fortin,^  Flaubert's 
own  physician,  said  that  when  he  was  going  to 
write  he  would  fall  into  a  secondary  state  in  the 

'  "  The  observations  of  the  epilepsy  of  men  of  genius,  and  nota- 
bly that  of  Gustave  Flaubert,  have  been  very  inadequately  taken." 
Revue  de  I'Hypnotisme,  1900-1Q01,  xv.,  270. 

""Flaubert:  His  Heredity,  Environment,  and  His  Method," 
1905. 

'  On  this  point,  says  Ribot  ("  Psychologic  des  Sentiments," 
Biblioth^que  de  Philosophic  Contemporaine,  1905,  p.  365),  "the 
statement  of  Flaubert  reported  by  Taine  has  been  received  with 
doubt  without  reason." 

^Michaut:  Chronique  Mddicale,  1900,  p.  775. 

* "  The  Subconscious  in  Flaubert,"  Chronique  M^dicalc,  1901,  p. 
28. 

[212] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEjSII-INSANE 

effort  to  externalize  himself.  "  Will  you  hereafter 
believe  in  the  omen  of  boots? "  wrote  Flaubert  to 
Louis  Bouilhet  in  1855.  "  Do  you  recall  that  on 
the  day  that  I  took  your  piece  to  Lafitte,  when  we 
were  in  the  Rue  Ste.  Anne,  I  said  to  you,  'It  will  be 
all  right;  I  have  just  seen  some  boots.  And  the 
boots  were  new  and  were  held  by  their  straps  ' .? "  * 
6.  Baudelaire  died  of  general  paresis  (Lombroso). 
He  himself  said  that  his  relatives  were  "  idiots  or 
madmen,  and  all  died  victims  of  terrible  insanity." 
He  abused  the  use  of  opium,  tobacco,  and  wine,' 
and  seemed  to  have  had  perverted  olfactory  sensa- 
tions. "  Lombroso  says  that  instead  of  good  odors 
he  preferred  those  which  any  healthy  man  would 
consider  obnoxious.  The  odors  of  putrefaction, 
decomposition,  and  of  disease  delighted  his  nos- 
trils," and  Bernard' added:  "Baudelaire,  another 
epicure  of  odors,  said  of  himself:  '  My  soul  soars 
upon  perfumes,  as  the  souls  of  other  men  soar 
upon  music'  Baudelaire  said  truly  that  he  had  a 
sort  of  diseased  passion  for  perfumes."  "  He  dyed 
his  hair  green  "  and  was  subject  to  impulsive  acts; 
one   day  he   tried    to  strangle   his  father-in-law. 

*  "  Echo  des  Merveilleux,"  1900,  p.   253.     Chronique  M^dicale, 
1900,  p.  627. 

'One  part  of  "Paradis  Artificiels"  bears  this  title:  "Wine  and 
Hasheesh  Compared  as  Means  of  Multiplying  One's  Individuality." 

•  Conference  quoted  later  on  "  The  Odors  in  the  Novels  of  Zola," 
p.  8. 

11213] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Here  is  a  description  which  he  gives  as  one  of  his 
"  neurotic  pleasantries  " :  * 

"  Having  arisen  one  day  sullen,  sad,  and  weary 
of  inactivity,  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  was  urged 
to  do  some  great  and  brilliant  deed  "  ;  he  opened 
the  window  and  saw  first  of  all  a  glazier  whose 
piercing  discordant  cry  had  floated  up  to  him. 
Without  knowing  why,  he  was  "seized  with  a  feel- 
ing of  hatred  for  this  poor  man  which  was  as  sud- 
den as  it  was  despotic."  He  called  out  to  him  to 
come  up,  and  reflected,"  not  without  delight,  that, 
the  room  being  on  the  sixth  floor,  and  the  staircase 
very  narrow,  the  man  would  experience  consider- 
able difficulty  in  getting  up-stairs  and  that  his  frag- 
ile merchandise  would  hit  in  many  places  as  he 
went  around  the  corners."  The  glazier  finally  ap- 
peared. I  examined  all  his  glasses  with  great  in- 
terest and  said  to  him :  "  What !  you  have  no 
colored  glass ?  No  rose,  nor  red,  nor  blue?  No 
magical  panes,  no  glass  from  Paradise  ?  Impudent 
fellow !  How  dare  you  go  about  in  these  poor 
parts  of  town  with  such  glass  when  you  have  not 
even  one  pane  through  which  one  can  see  the 
beauty  of  life?"  And,  continued  Baudelaire,  I 
thrust  him  roughly  toward  the  staircase,  down 
which  he  stumbled  grumbling.  I  went  out  on  to  the 
balcony  and  snatched  up  a  little  pot  of  flowers,  and 

'  "  The  Wicked  Glazier."    Little  poems  in  prose. 
[214] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

when  the  man  appeared  at  the  opening  of  the  door 
I  let  my  weapon  fall  perpendicularly  on  the  outer 
edge  of  his  pack.  The  shock  threw  him  over  and 
he  managed  to  break  the  whole  of  the  poor  travel- 
ing outfit  on  his  back,  with  a  smashing  sound  as  if 
a  crystal  palace  had  been  shattered  by  a  thunder- 
bolt. I  was  intoxicated  by  my  mad  prank  and 
cried  out  furiously  to  him.  "  The  beauty  of  life ! 
the  beauty  of  life ! "  He  declared  that  he  experi- 
enced at  that  moment  an  "  infinite  joy,"  but  he 
was  not  yet  insane,  at  least  not  officially  so. 

After  that,  with  Paul  Bourget,*  it  is  difficult  not 
to  see  in  the  poetry  of  Baudelaire  only  his  out- 
rageous paradoxes  and  laborious  mystifications. 
It  is  not  enough  to  see  in  his  work  the  part  that 
"mystification"'  plays,  by  which  ideas  in  them- 
selves only  exceptional  are  exaggerated  into  ag- 
gressive paradoxes.  It  is  necessary  to  read  them 
in  the  light  of  his  psychoneurosis  and  his  semi- 
insanity. 

Baudelaire  seems  to  have  died  of  softening  of 
the  brain  with  a  right  hemiplegia  and  aphasia. 
He  had  only  three  words:  " Non,  ere  noii,  non."  * 

'  Charles  Baudelaire  in  "Essays  of  Contemporary  Psychology." 
CEuvres  Completes,  1899,  t.  i.,  p.  3. 

'For  Michaut  also,  "Charles  Baudelaire  has  never  been  any- 
thing but  a  very  original  character,  smitten  with  dandyism  and 
loving  to  mystify  the  bourgeois." 

•Michaut:  "How  did  Baudelaire  die?"  Cbronique    M^dicale, 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

7.  Alfred  de  Musset  was  a  drug  habitue.  After 
having  indulged  in  a  frenzy  of  almost  super- 
human enjoyment,  he  would  sink  down  overcome 
with  such  profound  and  pitiful  weariness  that  his 
physical  exhaustion  was  unquestionable.*  He 
was  subject  to  internal  autoscopy  (see  previously, 
p.  91).  It  was  a  hallucination  of  this  kind  that 
he  describes  in  "A  December  Night" — 

"A  little  fellow,  hungry-eyed 
And  clothed  in  black,  sits  by  my  side, 
As  like  me  as  a  brother  were." 

George  Sand  ^  has  described  one  of  these  attacks 
of  De  Musset's  very  well :  "  While  he  was  lying  on 
the  grass  in  a  ravine,  Laurent  (Alfred  de  Musset) 
had  heard  the  echo  singing  all  alone ;  the  song  was 
an  obscene  refrain.  Then  as  he  raised  himself  on 
his  hands  to  inquire  into  this  phenomenon,  he  saw 
some  one  passing  before  him  on  the  heath.  It 
was  a  man  who  was  running  along,  pale  and  with 
torn  clothing,  his  hair  flying  in  the  wind.  'I  saw 
him  so  distinctly,'  said  he,  'that  I  had  time  to 
reason  about  it  and  to  tell  myself  it  must  be  some 
belated  pedestrian,  surprized  and  followed  by 
thieves,  and  I  even  looked  for  my  cane  to  go  to  his 

igo2,  p.  186.  See  Caban&s :  "The  Sadism  of  Baudelaire,"  ibid.^ 
1902,  p.  725,  and  Michaut :  "  A  Last  Word  on  the  Disease  of  Bau- 
delaire," ibid.,  1903,  p.  27. 

*£mile  Tardieu  :  Loc.  cit. 

•"Elle  et  Lui."    Centenary  ed.,  P-  no. 
[216] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

aid ;  but  the  cane  was  lost  in  the  grass,  and  the 
man  kept  coming  on  toward  me.  When  he  was 
quite  near  I  saw  that  he  was  intoxicated  and  not 
pursued.  He  passed  by  me,  looking  at  me  in  a 
stupid,  hideous  way,  and  making  an  ugly  grimace 
at  me  that  was  full  of  hatred  and  scorn.  Then  I 
was  seized  with  terror  and  threw  myself  on  my  face 
on  the  ground ;  for  this  man  .  .  .  was  I  myself ! '"  * 

Lefebure  ^  has  carefully  studied  the  supersensi- 
bility  of  Musset.  He  seems  to  have  experienced 
telepathic  phenomena,  and  according  to  Mme. 
Martellet,  was  able,  in  his  last  illness,  to  pull  the 
bell-cord  without  touching  it  (!).  He  had  colored 
audition.  "  He  related  to  Mme.  Joubert,  in  one  of 
his  (unedited)  letters  that  he  had  been  extremely 
annoyed,  while  driving  with  his  family,  to  be  obliged 
to  enter  into  a  discussion  to  prove  thatj^  was  yel- 
low and  sol  red,  and  that  a  soprano  voice  was 
blonde  and  a  contralto  voice  brunette.  He  be- 
lieved that  these  things  went  without  saying." ' 

At  eight  or  nine  years  of  age,  in  a  single  day, 

'  "  The  details  of  this  tale  lead  us  to  think  that  the  incident  took 
place  in  the  forest  of  Fontainebleau  at  the  time  when  the  two  lovers 
made  their  sojourn  there  at  the  beginning  of  their  liaison,  in  the 
autumn  of  1833.  Musset  was  twenty-two  years  of  age."  Paul 
Raymond  :  Progr^s  Medical,  1905,  p.  38. 

*"  Musset  a  Sensitive."  Annales  des  Sciences  Psychiques, 
1899,  t.  ix.,  pp.  13  and  80. 

•Arv^de  Barine:  Cited  in  Chronique  Mddicale,  1906,  t.  xiii., 
p.  130,  note. 

[217] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

he  broke  one  of  the  mirrors  in  the  drawing-room 
with  a  billiard  ball,  cut  the  new  curtains  with  a 
pair  of  scissors,  and  pasted  a  big  red  wafer  on  a 
large  map  of  Europe,  right  in  the  middle  of  the 
Mediterranean  Sea.  Toward  ten  or  twelve  years 
of  age  he  experienced  a  fascination  for  a  gilt  frame 
on  an  old  portrait,  and  he  often  used  this  to  hyp- 
notize himself.  "  He  had  several  fetishes  at  differ- 
ent times:  the  star-shaped  medallion  of  his  first 
mistress,  the  broken  comb  of  George  Sand,  a 
Fontainebleau  five-franc  piece,  a  pen  carved  by 
Sister  Marcelline."  In  Venice  he  was  "  like  a  mad- 
man all  night  after  a  period  of  great  disturbance. 
He  saw  shapes  like  fantoms  around  him  and  cried 
out  with  fear  and  horror."  George  Sand  has  de- 
scribed a  series  of  hallucinations.  "  Until  his  last 
moments,"  said  Paul  de  Musset,  "  his  sensitiveness 
increased  more  and  more.  He  was  subject  to  agi- 
tations, and  perpetual  emotional  disturbances." 
And  Mme.  Martellet  (Adele  Colin)  wrote:  "The 
nervousness  of  Mr.  Alfred  sometimes  borders  on 
the  supernatural,  and  I  often  wonder  whether  he 
does  not  possess  a  sixth  sense,  like  the  gift  of 
second  sight." 

Cabanes  *  has  carefully  studied  the  dipsomania 

*"The  Dipsomania  of  Alfred  de  Musset,"  Chronique  Mddicale, 
1906,  p.  142.  See  also  in  the  same  collection,  p.  302,  a  letter  of 
Mme.  Martellet,  the  elderly  governess  of  Alfred  de  Musset  (she 
had  passed  ninety  years  of  age). 

[218] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

of  De  Musset  and  begins  his  work  with  this  quota- 
tion of  Charles  Maurras:  "  It  is  hardly  possible  to 
speak  of  Alfred  de  Musset  without  first  mention- 
ing, in  order  completely  to  understand  all  of  the 
circumstances,  the  kind  of  madness  which  had 
marked  him  from  his  earliest  childhood."  He  was 
born  restless,  visionary,  and  slightly  maniacal,  sub- 
ject to  attacks  of  epilepsy,^  but  became  alcoholic 
at  the  age  of  twenty.  ...  In  the  Cafe  de  la  Re- 
gence,  Cabanes  continues:  "The  waiter  would 
generally  bring  him  a  plate  of  cigars,  and  a  fright- 
ful mixture  of  beer  and  absinthe,  which  he  would 
swallow  in  a  gulp,  making  a  face  of  disgust  such  as 
one  makes  when  taking  a  bitter  dose  of  medicine. 
.  .  .  Once  drugged  in  this  fashion,  Alfred  de  Mus- 
set would  settle  himself  solidly  against  the  back  of 
the  divan  and  would  light  one  cigar  after  another 
until  the  plate  was  empty.  At  half-past  eleven  the 
waiter  would  hail  a  cab,  lead  the  poet  by  the  arm, 
and  put  him  safely  into  the  vehicle.  He  would  let 
himself  be  quietly  taken  to  his  house,  where  his  old 
nurse  would  receive  him  and  put  him  to  bed  like 
a  child." 

8.  Bernardin  de  St.-Pierre '  saw  objects  double 
and  moving.     Flashes  of  light  interfered  with  his 

*This  has  not  been  proved. 

*Moreau  de  Tours:  Loc.  ctt.,zndi  x.    Notice  on  BernardlQ  de 
St.  Pierre  in  the  Introduction  to  his  "Selected  Works." 

[219] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

vision,  and  "  the  moment  he  met  people  in  the  pub- 
lic gardens  or  in  the  street  he  believed  himself  to 
be  surrounded  by  enemies  and  evil-wishers."  He 
looked  upon  himself  as  being  persecuted  and  ma- 
ligned, like  J.J.  Rousseau.  According  to  his  own 
statement  this  moral  sickness  all  but  made  him  lose 
his  reason.  His  biographers  add : "  He  nevertheless 
was  finally  cured."  Some  will  think  perhaps  that 
this  cure  was  not  wholly  accomplished  when  the 
author  of  "  Paul  and  Virginia  "  wrote  that  fieas  are 
black  and  generally  jump  upon  white  objects  so 
that  they  may  more  easily  be  caught.  Bernardin  de 
St.  Pierre  *  has  himself  described  his  neuropathy, 
saying:  "Like  CEdipus  I  see  two  suns;  on  the 
finest  summer  day  I  can  not  cross  the  Seine  in  a 
boat  without  experiencing  the  most  intolerable 
anxiety.  If  I  am  alone  in  the  public  gardens  and  go 
near  a  fountain  full  of  water,  I  experience  spas- 
modic movements  and  a  feeling  of  horror.  There 
are  times  when  I  believe  I  have  been  bitten  by  a 
mad  dog  without  knowing  it;  it  is  impossible  for 
me  to  stay  in  a  room  where  other  people  are,  espe- 
cially if  the  doors  are  closed.  I  can  not  even  walk 
along  a  path  in  a  public  garden  where  there  are  a 


*  Chronique  M^dicale,  1904,  p.  470.  This  passage  may  be  found, 
"Etudes  de  la  Nature,"  t.  i.,  p.  461;  "Pr^ambule  de  L'Arcadie," 
p.  465,  the  description  of  this  same  neuropathy  by  Sainte-Beuve 
("  Causeries  du  Lundi,"  t.  vi.). 

[230] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

number  of  people.  The  moment  that  they  look  at 
me  I  believe  that  they  are  speaking  ill  of  me,  even 
tho  they  are  quite  unknown  to  me." 

At  the  same  time  that  Bernardin  de  St.- Pierre 
showed  the  first  symptoms  of  ideas  of  persecution, 
his  brother  showed  prodromal  symptoms  of  delu- 
sions of  grandeur.  All  of  his  brothers  and  sisters 
were,  moreover,  "somewhat  disproportionately 
developed  in  their  faculties.  They  had  neurotic, 
badly  balanced  natures,  and  were  disordered  in 
mind."  His  son,  Paul  de  St.-Pierre,  was  declared 
legally  incompetent  and  "ended  an  ordinary  but 
disturbed  career  in  an  asylum."  ^ 

9.  The  celebrated  caricaturist  Andre  GilP  was  a 
patient  at  Charenton.  Then  he  came  out.  Al- 
phonse  Daudet  met  him  well.  "  Three  days  later 
he  was  picked  up  on  a  country  road,  thrown  across 
a  heap  of  stones ;  his  eyes  were  staring  with  fright, 
his  mouth  open,  his  countenance  was  vacant.  He 
was  mad,  mad  again.  .  .  .  Those  who  lived  near 
him  were  not  astonished,  they  told  me.  As  for 
me,"  said  Daudet,  "  I  was  horrified  and  shocked. 
Gill  was  the  third  of  our  little  band  whom  mad- 
ness had  taken  from  me.  Charles  Bataille  and 
Jean  Duboys  died  in  an  insane  asylum  almost 
under  my  very  eyes." 

'Chronique  M^dicale,  11^04,  p.  465. 

'Alplionse  Daudet:  "Andrd  Gill,"  Gaulois  du  Ditnanche, 
November  7,  1897. 

[221  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

10.  Salomon  de  Caus  was  mad  (Moreau  de 
Tours).  Voltaire  *  was  neurasthenic  and  hypochon- 
driacal. He  spent  his  whole  life  whimpering  over 
his  health  and  declaring  that  he  scarcely  ever  com- 
plained. Like  "a  little  Job  on  his  dung-heap,"  he 
was  either  actually  dying  or  literally  dying  all  the 
time.  He  thought  he  would  lose  his  sight  when 
Mme.  du  Deffand  became  blind.  "  I  have  been 
dying  all  my  life,"  said  he ;  "I  am  more  like  a 
skeleton  and  more  nearly  dead  than  ever."  And 
this  was  kept  up  for  eighty  years. 

Moliere  was  a  hypochondriac  and  a  melancholic. 
Larroumet^  has  very  nicely  developed  the  proof 
of  this,  chiefly  by  extracts  from  his  works  rather 
than  from  the  pamphlet  of  1670,  "  Elomire  Hypo- 
condre,"  to  which  Maurice  Raynaud'  has  called 
attention. 

According  to  Moreau  de  Tours,  Condillac  had 
frequent  attacks  of  somnambulism.  Gilbert  Ballet 
quotes  a  dream  that  Descartes  had  on  November 
10,  1 619  (at  the  age  of  twenty-four).  Lombroso 
says  that  Montesquieu  wore  a  place  on  his  floor 
by  convulsively  moving  his  feet  while  at  work. 

'Roger:  "Voltaire  Malade,  £tude  Historique  et  Mt^dicale," 
1883.  Lombroso,  on  the  other  hand,  classes  Voltaire  among  the 
"sane-minded  geniuses,"  who  lived  serenely  throughout  their  in- 
tellectual career. 

'  Moli&re's  hypochondria, "  Comddies  de  Moli&re,"  cited  in  Chro- 
nique  Mddicale,  1897,  p.  108, 

' "  Les  Mddecins  au  Temps  de  Moliere."    Raynaud. 
[  222  ] 


SOCIAL  VALUE   OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Buffon,  Santeuil/  and  Crebillon  were  always  ma- 
king queer  faces.  Ampere  could  not  express  his 
thoughts  unless  he  was  walking  about  and  keeping 
his  whole  body  in  perpetual  movement. 

According  to  Wechniakoff ,  we  must  class  among 
the  neuropaths  d'Alembert  whose  mind  grew 
weak  and  whose  memory  disappeared  so  that  he  lost 
all  judgment,  and  Lagrange,  who  passed  through 
a  pathological  phase  which  lasted  ten  years,  in 
which  he  experienced  languor,  lassitude,  and  a 
great  disgust  for  mathematics. 

Chateaubriand  also  experienced  an  early  rapid 
exhaustion.  This  was  partial,  it  is  true,  and  recov- 
erable. It  was  an  exhaustion  of  desire  and  of  fancy 
(Emile  Tardieu). 

In  his  mattoids^  "  those  temperaments  bordering 
on  insanity"  (Maudsley),  Lombroso  places  Enfan- 
tin  who  conceived  and  tried  to  carry  through  the 
cutting  of  the  Isthmus  of  Suez,  and  at  another 
time  wanted  to  establish  a  queer  new  religion. 

In  certain  of  the  intellectual  superiors  eccentrici- 
ties of  costume  and  of  living  are  enough  in  them- 
selves to  indicate  a  neuropathic  condition.  Among 
these  are  such  as  Villiers  de  I'lsle-Adam,  Barbey 


'  Santeuil,  says  Moreau  du  Tours,  nearly  lost  his  reason  before  he 
found  an  expression  for  which  he  had  been  searching  for  a  long 
time. 

[223] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

d'Aurevilly,  and  Sar  Peladan.  Cujas  "  worked  ly- 
ing flat  on  his  stomach  on  a  rug  "  ;  Bossuet  sat  "  in 
a  cold  room  with  his  head  wrapt  in  hot  cloths  "  ; 
Bourdaloue  "  scraped  out  an  air  on  his  violin  before 
writing  his  sermons." 

Malherbe  (Moreau  de  Tours*)  had  a  peculiar 
mania,  being  a  very  chilly  individual,  of  numbering 
his  stockings  by  the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  for  fear 
of  not  putting  mates  on  each  foot.  He  confest  one 
day  to  having  as  many  as  fifty  pairs.  ^ 

Napoleon  ^  "  suffered  from  a  habitual  twitching 
of  the  right  shoulder  and  of  the  lips."  He  believed 
in  presentiments  and  horoscopes,  and  sought  and 
accepted  the  prophecies  of  any  sorcerer  who  prom- 
ised him  good  fortune;  he  was  in  despair  when  he 
broke  a  mirror;  he  was  in  terror  of  Friday,  of  the 
number  13,  and  considered  the  letter  m  fatal. 

II.  Zola^  also  had  psychic  tics.     He  had  sensa- 

*  All  the  other  quotations  are  from  Lombroso. 

*  I  do  not  consider  the  superior  intellectuals  who  were  stammer- 
ers or  who  were  left-handed,  nor  the  ataxics,  nor  those  who  had  the 
habit  of  biting  their  nails,  nor  those  with  more  or  less  psycho- 
pathic heredity. 

'Lombroso:  Loc.  cit.;  Cabanas:  "The  Superstitions  of  Napo- 
leon I.,"  Chronique  Mddicale,  1896.  See  also  Barral:  "The 
Health  of  Napoleon  I.,"  ib.,  1900,  p.  T,^et  seq.;  Bougon :  "Some 
Manias  of  Napoleon  I.,"  ib.,  1904,  p.  490;  1905,  p.  524;  Calla- 
maud  :  "The  Hours  of  Weakness  of  Napoleon  \.," ib.,  1904, p.  801. 

■•  Edouard  Toulouse:  "Enquete  Mddicopsychologique  sur  les 
Rapports  de  la  Supdriorite  Intellectuelle  avec  la  Neuropathic.  I. 
Introduction  G^ndrale.     £mile  Zola,"  1896. 

[224] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

tions  of  light  in  the  evening  when  it  was  dark,  and 
whisperings  and  ringings  in  his  ears.  He  was 
chiefly  an  abnormal  olfactive.  "  One  of  his  amuse- 
ments was  to  make  a  distant  diagnosis  of  the 
dishes  being  prepared  for  his  next  meal.  This,  for 
example,  he  would  do  in  his  work-room  which  was 
located  above  the  kitchen  at  Medan.  He  could 
tell  whether  there  were  going  to  be  tomatoes,  a 
chicken,  or  a  leg  of  lamb;  and  also  for  the  fish, 
whether  there  were  sardines,  herring,  smelts,  or 
sole." 

Bernard  ^  has  given  an  excellent  description  of 
Zola  as  a  "musician,  the  symphonist  of  odors,  .  .  . 
the  novelist  with  the  sensitive  nostrils,  .  .  .  the 
man  who  lived  chiefly  by  his  nose,"  and  shows 
how  important  this  analysis  is  to  the  psychologist 
who  would  detect  the  secret  of  the  artist  and  dis- 
cover a  formula  of  his  temperament  and  his  talent." 

Zola  used  to  count  the  number  of  gas-jets  in  the 
street,  the  numbers  on  the  doors,  and  chiefly  the 
numbers  on  the  cabs.  He  would  add  all  the  fig- 
ures of  these  numbers  together  as  if  they  were 
units;  "for  a  long  time  the  multiples  of  three 
seemed  to  him  of  good  omen,  then  the  multiples  of 
seven  were  reassuring."    Seventeen  was  a  bad  num- 

'  Bernard :  "  Conference    sur  les  Odeurs  dans  les  Romans  de 
Zola."     Montpellier,  1S99, 

15  [22s] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ber.  He  was  once  thrown  out  of  a  cab ;  when  he 
hastened  to  add  up  the  figures  of  the  number  of  his 
cab  he  found  the  sum  to  be  seventeen !  "  For  a 
long  time  he  was  afraid  he  would  not  succeed  in 
any  proceeding  on  which  he  was  about  to  enter  if 
he  did  not  leave  the  house  with  his  left  foot  first." 
He  would  touch  certain  objects  or  close  a  door 
several  times  in  succession/ 

The  Goncourts  were  "morbidly  sensitive."^ 
"  So  much  so  that  they  were  at  the  mercy  of  every 
mental  or  physical  excitement."  They  came  to 
feel,  to  use  their  own  expression,  "  as  tho  they  were 
morally  flayed,  sensitive,  and  wounded  by  the  least 
impression,  so  that  without  anything  to  protect 
them  they  were  always  raw  and  bleeding." '  They, 
moreover,  cultivated  this  nervousness  and  were 
proud  of  being  so  "  exquisitely  sensitive."  They 
felt  that  they  were  highly  organized  in  their  tastes, 
whether  the  subject  was  a  picture  to  be  criticized 
or  the  wing  of  a  broiled  chicken.* 

They  were  anxious  to  describe  in  their  works 
these  nervous  symptoms  from  which  they  suffered, 

'  See  also  for  the  whole  Chronique  Mifdicale,  1902,  No.  20,  and 
specially  Toulouse  :  "Neuropathy  of  Zola  and  the  Psychology  of 
£mile  Zola,"  pp.  664  and  670. 

'Rend  Doumic:  "Portraits  of  Writers." 

•"Journal  des  Goncourt,"  t.  iii,,  p.  16.     Cited  by  Doumic. 

*  Jules  de  Goncourt  died  insane  (Maurice  de  Fleury,  loc.  cit.,  p. 
139).  See  also  p.  26,  remarks  concerning  Jules  de  Goncourt,  re- 
lated by  his  brother. 

[226] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

but  in  order  to  do  this  they  felt  they  would  have  to 
remodel  the  language.  "  The  French  language," 
they  said,  "has  been  molded  and  fashioned  by 
healthy  individuals.  To-day  we  find  the  language 
of  our  healthy  forebears  wholly  inadequate."  * 

12.  Quite  a  large  number  of  the  so-called  deca- 
dent authors^  showing  symptoms  of  colored  audi- 
tion or  auditory  taste  have  very  queer  associated 
sensations.  Thus  Arthur  Rimbaud  says  that  A 
is  black;  E,  white;  I, red;  U,  green;  O, blue,  and 
further  A  wears  a  black  velvet  corselet  with  bright 
shining  bands.' 


'See  also  Gelineau :  "A  Victim  of  Neurasthenia"  (Jules  de 
Goncourt),  and  Michaut:  "A  Pretended  Victim  of  Neurasthenia" 
(Edmond  de  Goncourt),  Chronique  M^dicale,  1901,  pp.  625,  698. 

*  In  addition  to  the  works  of  Lombroso  and  of  Nordau  cited, 
see  Bruneti^re  :  "  Symbolistes  et  Decadents,"  Nouvelles  Questions 
de  Critique,  1890,  p.  304;  £mile  Laurent:  "  La  Podsie  Ddcadente 
devant  la  Science  Psychiatrique,"  1897  ;  P.  H.  Martin  :  "  Ndvrose 
et  Podsie,"  Ltudes,  1898,  p.  145;  Grasset:  "  Legons  de  Clinique 
Mddicale,"  2ds.,  1896,  p.  672,  and  Henri  Vigen:  "  Le  Talent 
Podtique  chez  les  D6g6n6r6%,"  Thhse  de  Bordeaux,  1904. 

'According  to  Victor  Sdgalen  ("The  Double  Rimbaud,"  Mer- 
cure  de  France,  1906,  p.  486),  "  the  sonnet  entitled  'Vowels,'  which 
has  been  classed  as  a  theory  of  synthetic  art,  is  in  reality  only  a 
youthful  recollection  of  primary  sensations.  The  mechanism  of 
this  literary  plaything  was  such  as  to  leave  no  doubt  as  to  its 
explanation.  Ernest  Gaubert  (Mercure  de  France,  1904,  No- 
vember I):  A,  black;  E,  white;  I,  red;  U,  green;  O,  blue. 
This  is  quite  simple  because  the  ancient  letter-books  edited 
when  Rimbaud  was  learning  his  letters  had  a  black  A,  with  a  pic- 
ture of  a  Bee  (Abeille).  A,  with  a  black  velvet  corselet  with 
bright  shining  bands.  The  I  was  red,  the  U  green,  the  O  sky- 
blue,  the  E  only  was  different.     It  was  yellow." 

[227] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Another  says: 

"A,  scarlet  triumphant,  a  clarion  rings. 
E  sighs  like  a  lyre,  and  is  white  as  the  wings 
Of  the  angels.     I,  flutes  clear  and  true 
And  his  delicate  tones  are  a  heavenly  blue  ; 
But  the  bow  wails  in  O  in  a  rhythm  of  yellow. 
U  is  green  as  the  myrtle  you  pluck  by  the  way 
And  as  barren  of  love  as  a  cold  April  day." 

Rene  Ghil  in  his  treatise  on  the  verb  says  how 
the  colors  of  the  vowels  overwhelm  us,  sounding 
the  primordial  mysteries.  "  Apart  from  any  former 
prejudices  in  my  opinion  the  five  are  colored  as 
follows:  A,  black;  E,  white;  I,  blue;  O,  red;  U, 
yellow.  In  the  calm  beauty  of  these  five  fun- 
damental elements  the  world  expands  in  the 
sunlight." 

According  to  Mallarme,  this  correlation  of 
vowels  corresponds  "  to  progressive  evolution  in 
our  higher  senses.* 

In  a  book  of  Huysmans,  Des  Esseintes  gives 
a  gustatory  concert:  "Each  liquor  corresponded, 
according  to  him,  in  its  taste  to  the  sound  of  an 
instrument.  A  dry  cura9oa,  for  example,  corre- 
sponds to  a  clarionet  whose  tone  is  velvety  and 
tart;  klimmel  to  the  hautboy  with  its  sonorous 
nasal  timber;  cremede  menthe  and  anisette  to  the 


*See  also  Jean  Clavifere:  "Colored  Audition,"  Ann6  Psycho- 
logique,  1899,  t.  v.,  p.  161. 

[228] 


SOCIAL   VALUE   OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

flute,  which  is  at  the  same  time  sugary  and  pun- 
gent, whimpering  and  sweet ;  while  to  complete  the 
orchestra  kirsch  sounds  furiously  of  the  trumpet. 
Gin  and  whisky  carry  the  audience  away  by  the 
strident  outbursts  of  the  horns  and  trombones. 
Brandy  thunders  with  the  deafening  tumult  of  the 
bass  horns,  while  the  rattling  blows  of  the  cymbal 
and  of  the  drum  are  reproduced  on  the  mem- 
branes of  the  mouth  by  the  raki  of  Chios  and 
mastic." 

1 3.  Balzac  ^  had  an  ambulatory  mania.  This  need 
of  change  was  so  strong  in  him  that  often  neither 
his  relatives  nor  his  friends  would  know  where  he 
was  temporarily  living.  This  was  why  it  was  im- 
possible to  find  him  when  he  was  called  for  his 
military  service  in  the  National  Guard.*  But  he 
was  chiefly  a  megalomaniac;  he  placed  himself 
among  the  "  marshals  of  modern  literature." 
With  Napoleon,  Cuvier,  and  O'Connell  he  formed 
the  group  of  four  men  who  "  were  to  have  exerted 
an  enormous  influence  upon  their  century." 
"  I  shall  have  given  birth  to  an  entire  society  in 
my  brain,"  he  wrote  to  Mme.  Hanska.  "  What 
Napoleon  began  with  the  sword  I  shall  have  com- 


'See  Chronique  Mddicale,  1899,  No.  10,  which  was  devoted  en- 
tirely to  Balzac  by  Caban6s  on  the  centennial  of  his  birth,  May 
30,  1799. 

*  Fournicr :  "  Statue  of  Balzac  at  Tours."    Cited  by  Cabanfts. 
[229] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

pleted  by  my  pen."  "  His  consciousness  of  his  own 
greatness  was  simply  without  bounds,"  wrote 
George  Sand.  "  He  was  ahvays  talking  of  him- 
self and  only  of  himself.  One  evening,  when  he 
had  put  on  a  handsome  new  dressing-gown  he 
wanted  to  go  into  the  street  with  it  on  with  a  lamp 
in  his  hand  to  excite  the  admiration  of  the  public." 
His  father,  according  to  Moreau  de  Tours,  stayed 
in  bed  for  twenty  years  without  any  reason  and 
then  similarly  without  reason  he  took  up  his  for- 
mer mode  of  life. 

Diderot  used  to  rent  carriages  and  then  forget 
them  and  pay  for  whole  days ;  he  would  also  forget 
the  hour,  the  day,  and  the  month  and  "  even  per- 
sons with  whom  he  had  begun  to  converse.  He 
would  continue  to  pour  out  to  them  a  veritable 
monologue  like  a  somnambulist." 

14.  Mme.  de  Stael  took  opium  to  excess;  she 
wanted  to  be  wrapt  in  a  fur  robe  before  she  was 
buried,  and  when  she  was  at  home  she  used  "  in- 
cessantly to  roll  little  pieces  of  paper  between  her 
fingers.  The  valet  de  chambre  had  orders  to  leave 
a  plentiful  supply  of  them  upon  the  mantelpiece  " 
(Moreau  de  Tours). 

Mme.  Recamier  had  "  nervous  attacks  *  and  feel- 
ings of  suffocation  which  gave  her  the  agreeable 

'Cabanas:  "The   Blindness  of    Mme.   Recamier,"  Chronique 
Mddicale,  1906,  p.  161. 

[230] 


SOCIAL  VALUE   OF   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

sensation  of  being  strangled."  These,  with  an  ob- 
stinate cough  and  sudden  loss  of  voice  which  lasted 
several  hours  with  nervous  spasms  of  the  larynx, 
were  all  considered  as  nervous  by  Dr.  Recamier 
and  were  cured. 

I  mention  without  further  comment  several  other 
superior  women  whose  neuroses  have  been  very 
curious,  as  the  Marquise  du  Deffand,  the  Duchesse 
de  Chaulnes,  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe,  the  Mar- 
quise du  Chatelet,  and  Mile,  de  Lespinasse.* 

15.  Victor  Hugo^  wrote  at  fourteen  years  in  his 
school  journal :  "  I  will  be  a  Chateaubriand  or 
nothing."  In  1878,  in  a  projected  autobiography, 
he  tried  to  manufacture  a  genealogy,  and  to  dis- 
cover for  himself  a  line  of  ancestors.  He  donated 
to  a  collector  the  cap  which  he  wore  when  he  left 
Paris  after  the  coup  d'etat  on  the  night  of  Decem- 
ber 11-12,  1851. 

Louis  Veuillot  has  brought  out  sharply  Victor 
Hugo's  "intellectual  egotism,"  which  was  absolute- 
ly unbounded  and  as  a  consequence  most  irritating. 
He  had  a  veritable  disease  of  the  ego.' 


*"  Concerning  the  Diseases  of  Catherine  de  Medici,"  Chronique 
Medicale,  1900,  p.  161. 

*  Cabanas  :  **  The  Megalomania  (?)  of  Victor  Hugo,"  Chronique 
Medicale,  1902,  pp.  157,  242. 

*  In  certain  verses  of  Victor  Hugo  one  finds  a  curious  collection 
of  words  sounding  alike,  such  as  is  found  in  the  poems  of  the  in- 
sane.    Thus  in  "  Lc  Roi  s'Amuse": 

[231] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Charles  Nodier/  according  to  Baudin,  was  at- 
tacked from  his  earliest  youth  with  neurasthenia. 

This  was  the  diagnosis  of  Cabanes  and  of  Fabre 
de  Commentry.  And  he  died  of  neurasthenia  or 
rather  in  a  state  of  presenile  debility  to  which  his 
neurasthenia,  which  was  badly  treated  or'uncared 
for,  had  little  by  little  led  him.  His  symptoms 
were  general  weakness,  incapacity  for  all  kinds  of 
work,  insomnia,  headache,  multiple  neuralgias,  gas- 
tric troubles,  cardiac  disorders,  sensory  and  motor 
disturbances,  exaltation  and  depression,  melan- 
cholia and  hypochondria. 

Alexander  Duvms  Ji/s^  had  in  1859  a  severe  ner- 
vous attack.  His  father  relates  "  that  Alexander 
was  very  ill,  and  for  two  days  past  he  had  been  on 
his  knees  in  the  middle  of  his  room  without  being 
able  to  make  up  his  mind  to  get  up;  .  .  .  two  days 

"Soriir,^  quand  mon  sori  k  ton  sori  est  U6 1 " 

The  English  rendering  of  this  fails  to  show  the  play  on  words 
of  similar  sound. 

"Go!" 

"  What,  go,  when  my  fate  is  bound  up  in  thy  fate  ! " 

I  will  not  be  so  irreverent  as  to  compare  these  verses  to  the  fol- 
lowing ascribed  to  an  insane  man  and  quoted  by  Rdgis  ("The 
Poetry  of  the  Mentally  Diseased,"  L'Enc^phale,  1906,  p.  274): 

"  On  peut  tirer  en  s'amusant 
Deux  sous  d'un  sel  qui  lave  tout 
De  soude,  un  sel  qui  lave  tout." 
'  Chronique  Mddicale,  1903,  p.  165. 

•"Mysterious  Disease  of  A,  Dumasyf/j,"  Chronique  Mddicale, 
1906,  p.  392. 

[232] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

before,  having  heard  his  father  snoring  in  a  neigh- 
boring room,  the  sound  had  produced  such  a  ner- 
vous irritation  that  the  thought  had  come  to  him 
to  kill  his  father,  and  he  had  been  able  to  resist  it 
only  by  getting  down  on  his  knees;  .  .  .  for  a  year 
longer  Dum'as^f/i"  remained  in  this  insane  condi- 
tion. .  .  .  On  recovering  from  this  cerebral  dis- 
order Dumas  was  taken  with  a  violent  attack  of 
mysticism ;  he  made  up  his  mind  to  become  a  re- 
ligious at  any  cost ;  .  .  .  finally  he  recovered  com- 
pletely. We  might  say,  however,  that  in  1873  after 
*La  Femme  de  Claude'  he  had  another  attack  which 
lasted  but  a  short  time." 

16.  De  Chirac,  says  Jules  Claretie,*  was  a  porno- 
graphic maniac  and  diseased  from  the  scientific 
point  of  view.  By  means  of  his  scandalous  reper- 
toire he  almost  established  a  following.  De 
Chirac  was  a  demi-fou  who  never  stopt  halfway  in 
his  evil-doing.  He  was  the  first  to  suffer  from  it. 
He  died  of  his  demi-follies,  in  acting  out  an  attack 
of  delirium  tremens.  The  real  agony  replaced 
the  fictitious  suffering;  and  a  final  hiccough  closed 
the  tragic  scene. 

Albert  Glatigny,'  who  has  often  been  spoken  of 
lately  in  connection  with  the   drama   of   Catulle 

'Jules  Claretie :  "Life  in  Paris,"  Temps,  March  i6,  1906. 
*£mile  Faguet:  "La  Semaine   Dramatique,"  Journal  des  D6 
bats,  March  19,  1906. 

[233] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Mendes,  "  was  somewhat  like  Verlalne  of  the  Sec- 
ond Empire.  He  was  of  the  same  type  as  the 
Gringoires,  the  Villons,  Assoucis,  and  Scarrons 
belonging  to  that  race  of  irregular  individuals  who 
have  no  respect  for  law.  He  was  what  physicians 
would  call  an  itinerant,  a  wanderer,  or  a  metato- 
pomaniac.  .  .  .  He  was  a  man  with  marked  eccen- 
tricities of  character  or  rather  of  humor.  He  was 
a  typical  exemplification  of  what  Dr.  Grasset  calls 
a  demi-fou,  but  he  was  at  the  same  time  upright, 
brave,  and  loyal."  * 

5.  Foreign  Intellectual  Superiors 

I.  Tasso'  was  a  lypemaniac.  He  himself  de- 
scribed his  hallucinations,  which  were  chiefly  au- 
ditory (men  and  women  crying,  beasts  laughing, 
singing,  whips  cracking,  bells  tinkling  and  ring- 
ing, and  clocks  striking).  He  thought  he  saw  a 
knight  who  threw  himself  upon  him  and  knocked 
hifn  to  the  ground,  or  else  he  imagined  himself  to 
be  covered  with  unclean  beasts. 

One  day  while  under  these  influences  he  drew  a 
knife  and  tried  to  strike  a  valet  who  came  into  his 
room.     His  troubles  were  caused  by  "  magic  art " ; 

*See  also  Camille  Pelletan,  "Albert  Glatigny,"  La  D^peche, 
March  23,  1906. 

'Verga:  "  Lipemania  del  Tasso."  Cited  by  Lombroso.  See 
also  Cabanas:  Chronique  M^dicale,  1900,  p.  211. 

[234] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

he  spoke  of  his  "familiar spirit"  who  brought  him 
his  letters,  or  of  a  "  magician  "  who  took  his  bread 
away  from  him.  And  he  wrote  sadly:  "  I  do  not 
deny  that  I  am  insane."  While  he  was  confined 
from  1579  to  1586  with  the  friars  of  St.  Anne  who 
seemed  to  have  had  a  regular  asylum,  he  showed 
all  the  symptoms  of  a  well-developed  persecutory 
mania  with  hallucinations  of  sight  and  hearing, 
having  sometimes  an  affair  with  the  devil,  some- 
times with  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  at  times  with  a 
hobgoblin  who  took  away  his  bread  and  his 
dessert.* 

Montaigne  was  thinking  of  Tasso  (quoted  by 
Lauvriere)  when  he  said:  "As  great  friendships 
give  birth  to  great  enmities,  and  vigorous  health  to 
mortal  disease,  so  do  the  activities  of  the  keenest 
minds  pass  over  to  the  wildest  mental  disorders. 
By  watching  the  actions  of  men  in  a  rage  we  may 
see  how  madness  conforms  to  the  most  active 
operations  of  our  minds.  Who  can  tell  how  near 
to  the  border-land  of  insanity  a  brilliant  and  un- 
trammeled  mind  may  approach,  even  tho  it  may 
seem  remarkable  and  strong?" 

2.  Frederick  Nietzsche,^  the  philosopher  who  has 
established  a  school  in  Germany  and  elsewhere, 
was  confined  at  several  different  times  in  asylums, 
and  finally  was  committed  as  an  incurable  dement 

'  Rcgnard  :  Loc.  cit. ,  p.  146.  *  Max  Nordau  :  Loc.  cit. 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

to  Dr.  Binswanger's  sanitarium  at  Jena,  where 
Nordau,  quoting  the  EngHsh  saying,  pronounced 
him  to  be  the  "  right  man  in  the  right  place." 

According  to  Lichtenberger,^  the  darkness  of 
insanity  fell  upon  him  abruptly  without  prepara- 
tion. He  was  suddenly  struck  down  in  Turin  dur- 
ing the  first  days  of  January,  1889.  Perhaps  a 
medical  critic  could  have  found  the  prodromal 
symptoms  of  his  disease  in  certain  of  his  previous 
works.  "Prophet  of  the  Superman"  (?)  and 
"  The  Eternal  Return,"  possibly  even  in  his  great 
work, "  Thus  Spake  Zarathusthra,"  which  appeared 
from  1883  to  1886. 

3.  The  great  pessimist  Schopenhauer'  had  a 
very  marked  neuropathic  heredity.  His  grand- 
mother had  an  aunt  and  a  grandfather  who  were 
insane.  His  father,  who  was  deaf  from  his  youth, 
had  a  mania  for  traveling  and  used  to  fly  into  terri- 
ble passions  and  was  subject  to  abnormal  anxieties. 

It  was  suspected  that  he  committed  suicide.  The 
wife  of  this  misanthrope,  who  was  eccentric  to  the 
point  of  lypemania  (the  mother  of  the  philosopher), 
was  a  feminine  writer;  she  was  vivacious  and  am- 
bitious and,  as  he  himself  said,  of  rather  "easy 
habits."     His  brother  Frederick  was  an  imbecile, 

'"Introduction  to  Aphorisms  and  Fragments  of  F.  Nietzsche," 
Biblioth^que  de  Philosophie  Contemporaine,  1899. 
*  Lombroso  :  Loc.  cit. 

[236] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SE^n-INSANE 

Schopenhauer  himself  from  his  boyhood  felt  a 
demon  within  him.  He  used  to  pass  entire  weeks 
without  speaking  to  anybody.  Then  he  would  talk 
out  loud  and  gesticulate  while  alone,  either  in  the 
street  or  while  at  a  table  d'hote.  He  broke  the 
hotel  proprietor's  arm  because  he  heard  him  talk- 
ing outside  of  his  room.  He  flew  into  a  passion 
and  refused  to  pay  his  bill  when  he  found  that  they 
had  spelled  his  name  with  two  p's  on  the  account 
which  was  presented  to  him.  He  would  burn  his 
beard  instead  of  shaving,  hide  gold  in  theinkstaiid 
and  bills  of  exchange  in  the  bedclothes.  His  great- 
est fear  was  of  a  razor.  He  wrote  his  notes  in 
Greek,  Latin,  and  Sanskrit,  and  scattered  them 
through  his  books  so  that  no  one  would  take  them. 
He  was  the  victim  of  a  vast  conspiracy  of  profes- 
sors of  philosophy.  He  repudiated  monogamy 
and  extolled  tetragamy,  to  which,  with  the  vestige 
of  reason  left  to  him,  he  could  see  but  one  draw- 
back and  that  was  to  have  four  mothers-in-law  at 
his  heels.  In  his  will  he  left  all  his  inheritance  to 
soldiers  and  to  his  dog. 

4.  Swift  *  had  announced  in  his  youth  that  he 
would  go  mad,  and,  in  fact,  he  did  all  sorts 
of  inconsequential  things,  lost  his  memory  tho 
talkative,  spent  an  entire  year  without  speak- 
ing,   reading,    or    recognizing  anybody,  walked 

'  Loinbroso  :  Loc.  cit. 
[237] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ten  hours  a  day,  always  ate  standing  up  or  refused 
nourishment,  and  became  furious  if  any  one  came 
into  his  room;  .  .  .  he  died  in  1745  completely  de- 
mented, bequeathing  11,005  pounds  sterling  to  the 
insane. 

5.  Hoffmann  *  used  wine,  and  of  the  best  quality, 
to  intoxicate  himself.  "  He  would  now  and  then 
add  a  bowl  of  punch  for  the  pleasure  of  watching 
the  battle  between  the  salamanders  and  the  gnomes 
which  lived  in  the  sugar.  When  he  was  going  to 
compose  church  music  he  used  to  order  old  French 
or  Rhenish  wines ;  for  grand  opera  the  best  Bur- 
gundy, for  comic  opera  champagne,  for  songs  the 
warm  wines  of  Italy,  and  finally,  for  such  a  roman- 
tic composition  as  'Don  Juan,'  a  moderate  glass  of 
the  beverage  in  which  the  battle  of  the  salaman- 
ders and  the  gnomes  took  place." 

He  soon  noticed  that  after  spiced  wine  he  would 
"  see  fantoms  and  have  thoughts  of  death." 

He  heard  colors,  then  he  heard  odors  and  saw 
sounds.  "  The  perfume  of  the  dark  red  carna- 
tion had  an  extraordinary  powerful  magic  influ- 
ence upon  him.  .  .  .  He  would  hear,  as  if  at  a  great 
distance,  the  sounds  of  a  horn  alternately  rising 
and  falling."  During  a  very  severe  attack  of  fever 
which  he  had  he  mistook  his  nurses  for  musical  in- 
struments.   The  flute  was  a  friend  who  spoke  very 

'  Arv^de  Barine :  Loc.  cit. 
[  238  I 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SE:^^-INSANE 

low  and  with  a  rather  languorous  voice,  the  bas- 
soon was  another  with  a  deep  bass  voice. 

Sometimes  Hoffmann  thought  he  could  "  ema- 
nate phosphorescence  in  the  dark."  One  day,  in 
a  well-lighted  room  full  of  people  he  saw  a  goblin 
rise  out  of  the  parquet  floor.  When  he  was  alone 
at  night  and  seated  at  his  work-table  he  was  sur- 
rounded by  ghosts  and  grinning  figures.  Fantas- 
tic tales  seemed  to  spring  into  life  about  him  with 
such  realism  that  he  was  often  seized  with  fright 
and  he  would  go  to  awaken  his  wife.  The  patient 
Micheline  would  get  up,  put  on  her  petticoat,  and 
sit  down  near  her  husband  to  reassure  him." 
He  was  afraid  of  becoming  insane,  but  he  looked 
upon  each  tale  that  he  wrote  as  an  "intellectual 
purgation,"  or  "bleeding,"  which  purified  his 
brain. 

He  was  little  and  deformed  from  his  birth,  but 
he  became  a  "  sadly  tattered  specimen  of  humanity, 
all  the  more  piteous  to  see  because  there  was  some- 
thing laughable  about  his  being  reduced  to  noth- 
ing, threadbare,  shriveled,  and  lamentable.  The 
nurse  used  to  carry  Hoffmann  in  her  arms  as  an 
infant  in  the  cradle.  He  found  this  very  droll,  but 
he  found  everything  droll,  even  to  the  end." 

6.  Edgar  Allan  Poe  drank,  as  Baudelaire  has 
said,  "like  a  savage."  He  would  seize  a  glass  of 
liquor,  without  water  or  sugar,  and  swallow  it  at  a 

[239] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

gulp  without  tasting  it.  And  then  he  had  horrible 
hallucinations  which  he  has  described  in  his  tales. 
He  lived  in  thought  among  tombs,  in  the  company 
of  worms  and  coffins.  He  felt  the  very  "  essence 
of  putrefaction  "  and  knew  the  "  sensations  of  dis- 
solution." 

Listen  to  this  "Entrance  of  the   Conquering 
Worm  " : 

"  But  see,  amid  the  mimic  rout 

A  crawling  shape  intrude  ! 
A  blood-red  thing  that  writhes  from  out 

The  scenic  solitude  ! 
It  writhes— it  writhes— with  mortal  pangs 

The  mimes  become  its  food, 
And  the  angels  sob  at  vermin  fangs 

In  human  gore  imbued." 


"  Once  upon  a  midnight  dreary  .  .  .  suddenly  there  came  a  tap- 
ping* 
As  of  some  one  gently  rapping,  rapping  at  my  chamber  door.  .  . 

Open  here  I  flung  the  shutter,  when,  with  many  a  flirt  and  flutter, 

In  there  stepped  a  stately  Raven  of  the  saintly  days  of  yore. 
Not  the  least  obeisance  made  he  ;  not  an  instant  stopped  or  stayed 
he ; 
But  with  mien  of  lord  or  lady,  perched  above  my  chamber 
door — 
Perched  upon  a  bust  of  Pallas  just  above  my  chamber  door — 
Perched,  and  sat,  and  nothing  more." 

And  then  began  the  celebrated  scene  that  is  so 
well  known,  in  which  the  author  puts  a  series  of 
questions  to  which  the  raven  invariably  and  lugu- 
briously, with  what  Alphonse  Daudet  calls  a  "  dark 
sob,"  replies  with  the  fatal  words  "  never  more." 

[240] 


SOCL\L  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

There  is  an  element  of  paralyzing  terror  in  all 
Poe's  stories. 

A  brigand  enters  at  night  in  an  old  man's  room 
to  kill  him;  the  old  man  wakens  and  feels  that 
somebody  is  there ;  the  assassin  realizes  that  the 
old  man  has  awakened ;  and,  in  absolute  silence,  in 
total  darkness  these  two  men,  each  equally  terri- 
fied, remain  for  an  hour  in  each  other's  presence, 
without  being  seen,  in  a  silent  and  inexpressible 
anguish.  A  brother  has  buried  his  sister  alive;  he 
hears  her  attempts  to  break  open  her  coffin,  but 
remains  nailed  to  his  seat  by  a  fear  that  passes  the 
bounds  of  human  reason.  A  condemned  man 
stupidly  watches  the  sharp  sword  lowered  upon  his 
breast  as  slowly  as  the  weights  of  a  clock  would 
fall.  Another  describes  his  sensations  while  the 
hand  of  a  great  clock  slowly  cuts  off  his  neck. 

The  element  of  fright  is  accentuated;  Poe's 
thoughts  become  more  and  more  hideous ;  through 
the  shadows  pierced  with  red  lights  appear  mon- 
strous forms  moving  fantastically  to  the  sound  of 
a  discordant  melody,  while  surging  toward  the 
dark  door  a  hideous  crowd  moves  eternally  and 
laughs,  but  never  smiles. 

Poe  had  a  series  of  attacks  of  delirium  tremens 
and  died  saying,  "  Lord,  save  my  poor  soul ! " 

One  can  understand  why  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  ex- 
claims, "  Since  Pascal  perhaps  there  has  never  been 
i6  [  241  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

a  more  frightful  genius,  or  one  given  over  to  such 
terror  and  mortal  agony,  as  this  genius  of  panic, 
Edgar  Allan  Poe ! " 

The  preceding  picture  of  the  semi-insanity  of 
Poe  was  written*  at  the  time  when  Lauvriere's* 
excellent  study  had  not  yet  appeared. 

The  question  of  Poe's  psychoneurosis  is  here 
fully  treated.  The  book  bears  this  epigraph: 
"  The  realities  of  the  world  affect  me  like  dreams, 
and  like  dreams  only,  while  the  foolish  ideas  of  the 
land  of  dreams  become  in  turn,  not  only  the  mate- 
rial of  my  every-day  existence,  but  in  truth  my  very 
existence  itself  "  (Berenice).  The  author  has  made 
a  complete  analysis  of  the  psychological  phenomena 
of  this  patient  (Briggs).  Like  Arvede  Barine  he 
sees  in  him  a  dipsomaniac,  but  he  goes  further. 
Such  dipsomania,  says  he,  is  of  itself  only  a  sign 
which  in  this  case  is  more  noticeable  than  in  many 
others  of  general  nervous  disequilibrium  which  is 
termed  degeneracy.  All  the  traits  of  degeneracy 
are  present  in  Poe.  They  are  as  clearly  written  in 
his  body  as  in  his  soul,  in  his  poor  haggard  face 
with  its  Bohemian  inspirations  as  in  his  most  im- 
mortal pages  of  prose  and  verse.  This  mental 
and  psychic  degeneracy  is  the  indelible  mark  of  his 
very  being.     It  explains   everything  in   him:  his 

'"  L'Alcoolisme  Insidieux  et  Inconscient,"  Montpellier.   Coulet. 
'Emile  Lauvri&re  :  "Poe  :  His  Life  and  Works."    Paris,  1904. 
[242] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

strength  and  his  weakness,  his  genius  and  his  mad- 
ness, his  misfortune  and  his  glory.  Without  it  his 
Hfe  and  his  work  appear  merely  as  senseless  mon- 
strosities, but  with  it  everything  becomes  clear, 
logical,  and  even  harmonious.^ 

7.  Thomas  de  Quincey '  had  a  bad  neuropathic 
heredity.  His  father  died  of  phthisis.  One  brother 
was  a  hot-headed  fellow  who  ran  away  and  became  a 
pirate.  The  others  "  were  melancholy  and  of  medi- 
tative temperament,  and  loved  to  sit  around  a  fire 
when  night  was  falling  and  shiver  in  silence  while 
the  shadows  crept  behind  them  with  their  host  of 
mysterious  forces."  One  of  them,  a  crack-brained 
fellow,  "  tried  to  learn  how  to  walk  on  the  ceiling 
with  his  head  down  like  a  fly,"  but  died  before  he 
had  learned  how. 

He  himself  always  had  oppressive  dreams  and, 
at  the  age  of  ten,  veritable  hallucinations.  When 
he  was  fifteen  years  old  he  composed  lyric  poems 
in  Greek,  then  he  became  a  wanderer  and  com- 
mitted all  the  sorts  of  freakish  eccentricities  of  a 
badly  balanced  student.  He  also  had  slight  attacks 
of  oppressive  sleepiness  which  would  seize  him  at 
any  time.  He  frequented  low  clubs,  studied  phi- 
losophy, and  took  opium,  actually  taking  in  a  sin- 

*  I  shall  refer  later  to  this  conception  of  talent  as  a  manifesta- 
tion of  degeneracy. 

•  Arv^de  Barine  :  Loc.  cit. 

[243] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

gle  day  10,000  or  12,000  drops  of  laudanum,*^., 
several  wine-glasses  full. 

After  a  short  "poisonous  honeymoon"  he  be- 
came subject  to  hallucinations,  moral  paralysis, 
and  idiocy.  He  struggled  in  despair,  but  was  al- 
ways slipping  down  an  abyss,  at  the  bottom  of 
which  three  specters  lay  in  wait  for  him :  madness, 
suicide,  or  spontaneous  combustion.  When  he  set 
fire  to  his  papers  and  his  books  he  would  not  let 
any  one  throw  water  on  them  to  put  them  out,  for 
fear  of  wetting  them.' 

In  the  same  article  Arvede  Barine  names  the 
following  men  as  having  succumbed  to  the  tempta- 
tion of  opium:  Lord  Erskine,  the  very  pious  Will- 
iam Wilberforce,  and  several  other  distinguished 
personages,  chief  among  whom  was  Coleridge,  that 
famous  opium-eater,  in  comparison  with  whose 
achievements  of  De  Quincey's  were  but  innocent 
pastimes,  and  whose  intimate  life  De  Quincey 
himself  has  portrayed. 

He  quarreled  with  his  wife  and  hired  an  atten- 
dant forcibly  to  prevent  him  from  buying  opium, 
but  he  managed  to  evade  his  man ;  he  would  an- 
nounce a  lecture  and  never  appear  to  give  it,  or 
would  fall  asleep  on  the  platform ;  he  would  get  up 

'  Alfred  de  Musset  was  the  first  to  translate  into  French  "  The 
Confessions  of  an  Opium-Eater,"  by  Thomas  de  Quincey.  Charcot 
said  of  this  work  that  it  was  as  valuable  from  a  scientific  as  from 
a  literary  point  of  view.     Chronique  M^dicale,  1899,  p.  32. 

[244] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

at  night  and  appear  in  his  night-cap  with  several 
layers  of  handkerchiefs  tied  over  it.  He  put  him- 
self under  the  care  of  a  physician  and  was  cured  of 
his  opium  habit. 

8.  Haller/  the  celebrated  physiologist,  believed 
himself  to  be  pursued  of  men,  and  condemned  of 
God  because  of  the  ugliness  of  his  soul  and  for  his 
heretical  works ;  and  he  took  enormous  doses  of 
opium. 

Jerome  Cardan,'  whose  father  believed  himself 
to  be  guided  by  a  spirit,  had  himself,  by  virtue  of 
the  astrological  phenomena  of  the  sky  at  his  birth, 
many  enemies  of  which  the  majority  were  un- 
known to  him  either  by  name  or  by  sight.  He  was 
visited  and  assisted  by  a  spirit  who  warned  him  of 
danger  and  who  gave  him  palpitation  of  the  heart. 
He  had  hallucinations  of  smell. 

The  same  Jerome  Cardan  said  in  his  autobiog- 
raphy that  "  he  could  not  exist  without  suffering, 
and  that  when  he  found  himself  in  such  a  state 
such  an  impetuous  feeling  arose  within  him  that 
all  other  pains  seemed  to  him  to  be  soothing. 
While  in  this  condition  he  also  had  the  habit  of  tor- 
turing his  body  until  he  brought  tears  to  his  eyes." 
Ribot,'  from  whom  this  quotation  has  been  taken, 
adds :  "  One  would  be  able  to  make  a  curious  study 

'Lombroso:  Loc.  cii.  'Lclut:  Local. 

•Ribot:  "  Psychology  of  the  Feelings." 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

in  psychopathology  in  following  the  inner  life 
of  Cardan,  who  was  manifestly  what  in  our  days 
would  be  called  an  unbalanced  neuropath." 

9.  Newton  *  became  insane  in  his  old  age.  He 
would  deliver  fantastic  and  incoherent  lectures. 
While  driving  he  would  clinch  his  hands  and  defy 
Villars,  whom  he  wished  to  fight  in  the  Cevennes. 
He  wrote  confused  and  obscure  letters  which 
point  to  delusions  of  persecution,  and  he  became 
melancholic.  He  had  been  absent-minded  all  his 
life.  One  could  scarcely  doubt,  says  Regnard,' 
that  Newton  became  afiflicted  in  1694,  i.e.,  at 
the  age  of  fifty-two,  with  a  mental  affection 
the  precise  nature  of  which  it  is  difficult  to  de- 
termine. Henri  Joly^  cites  the  statement  of 
Huygens,  borrowed  from  Biot  ("  Melanges  Sci- 
entifiques  et  Litteraires"),  that  the  illustrious 
astronomer  Isaac  Newton  has  suffered  from  a  de- 
mentia for  the  past  eighteen  months  (told  in  1694, 
May  29).  .  .  .  Following  this  accident,  having 
shown  itself  while  he  was  at  the  house  of  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Cambridge,  and  having  held  a  discourse 
which  showed  his  mental  alienation,  his  friends 
took  care  of  him  and  treated  him,  by  locking  him 
up  in  his  apartments  and  then  administering  to 
him,  willy  nilly,  such  remedies  by  means  of  which 

'Moreau  de  Tours:  Loc.  cii.j  Lombroso:  Loc.  cit. 
•Regnard  :  Loc.  cit.,  p.  56.  *  Joly  :  Loc.  cit..,  p.  117. 

[246] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

he  recovered  his  health  to  such  a  degree  that  he 
was  enabled  to  comprehend  his  own  "  Principles." 

10.  Zimmermann  died  insane,  hallucinating,  and 
melancholic.     O'Connell  died  of  general  paresis.^ 

All  the  newspapers  have  announced  that  the 
great  painter  Munkaczy  had  lost  his  reason  and 
had  been  committed.  Late  in  1899  a  letter  of 
Mme.  Munkaczy  to  the  Joumal"^  announced  that 
the  health  of  her  husband  had  been  suddenly  and 
seriously  complicated  by  a  paralysis  of  the  lower 
extremities.  Furthermore,  the  cerebral  faculties 
were  completely  dulled  and  blindness  threatened 
the  unhappy  artist.  His  illness  grew  worse  until 
his  death. 

Watt'  died  hypochondriacal.'' 

Manzoni,  the  author  of  "  Fiances,"  suffered 
from  melancholia  in  his  youth. 

Oliver  Cromwell,*  once  while  lying  on  his  bed, 
unable  to  close  his  eyes,  saw  the  curtains  part,  and 
a  woman  of  gigantic  stature  appeared  and  proph- 
esied to  him  that  he  would  be  the  greatest  man 
in  England.  He  had  also  violent  attacks  of  bad 
temper. 

'  Moreau  de  Tours :  Loc.  cit. 

'Chronique  Mddicale,  1900,  p.  15. 

'  Moreau  de  Tours  :  Loc.  cit. 

'Aristotle,  says  Maudsley,  "Pathology  of  the  Mind,"  has  re- 
marked that  great  men  have  a  tendency  to  melancholia  and  hypo- 
chondria. 

*  Moreau  de  Tours:  Loc.  cit.;  Lombroso;  Loc.  cit. 

[247] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

II.  Goethe  wrote  much  of  his  poetry  while  in  a 
state  somewhat  resembling  somnambulism ;  he  had 
a  character  which  alternated  from  extreme  joy  to 
great  depression.  He  affirms  having  one  day  seen 
his  own  image  come  and  meet  him.  Hahn*  has 
taken  up  the  question  of  the  psychopathology  of 
Goethe,  following  the  work  of  Mobius  on  this 
subject.' 

"  His  grandfather  was  somewhat  visionary  and 
had  presentiments,  premonitory  dreams,  and  other 
occult  phenomena.  His  sister  was  eccentric,  ab- 
normal, and  degenerate.  He  himself  said  that 
from  his  birth  he  had  had  a  tendency  toward  hy- 
pochondria. He  had  wholly  unjustifiable  attacks 
of  anger  in  which  he  would  act  deliriously.  He 
had  a  '  tcedium  vit(^ '  with  a  tendency  to  suicide  " 
(Werther).  Mobius  has  likened  his  periods  of  pro- 
duction to  the  maniacal  phase  of  circular  insanity. 
In  Goethe's  works  there  are  plenty  of  degenerates, 
hystericals,  and  even  insane  characters.  He  did 
not  study  these  types  in  the  insane  asylums,  of 
which  he  stood  in  horror;  he  observed  them  in 
himself  or  in  the  society  which  surrounded  him. 

*Hahn:  "The  Psychopathology  of  Goethe,"  Chronique  Mddi- 
cale,  1904,  pp.  321,  358. 

'Mobius:  "  Ueber  das  Pathologische  bei  Goethe,"  1898,  and 
"  Stachyologie,"  1901,  p.  91.  See  Chronique  Mddicale,  1906,  p. 83, 
for  the  analysis  of  a  work  of  Mobius  on  "  Degeneracy  in  the 
Family  of  Goethe." 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

A  spirit  used  to  appear  to  van  Helmont  in  all 
the  important  circumstances  of  his  life.  He 
thought  of  his  own  soul  as  a  resplendent  crystal. 

Weber  would  forget  on  the  second  page  what 
he  read  on  the  first.  Fechner  wrote  the  history 
of  his  disease — insomnia,  attacks  of  prostration, 
weariness  of  life;  he  could  no  longer  read,  write, 
nor  bear  the  light.  He  had  obsessive  ideas,  and 
his  friends  considered  him  insane.^ 

Frederick  H.  had  such  a  dislike  of  changing  his 
coat  that  he  did  not  have  more  than  two  or  three 
throughout  the  course  of  his  life. 

Schiller,  when  he  wanted  to  meditate,  would  put 
his  feet  on  ice  and  would  sniff  the  aroma  of  fer- 
menting apples  which  he  always  kept  on  purpose 
in  the  drawer  of  his  bureau. 

Paisiello  could  not  compose  unless  he  was  wrapt 
in  six  blankets  in  the  summer-time  and  nine  in 
winter. 

Byron  had  an  attack  of  convulsions  when  he 
heard  Kean  recite ;  he  somletimes  imagined  that 
he  was  visited  by  a  ghost.^ 

Gilbert  Ballet^  has  described  and  minutely  ana- 
lyzed the  hallucinations  of  Swedenborg,  the  theos- 
ophist  of  the  eighteenth  century,  who  established 

'  Wechniakoff,  Loc.  cit.  '  Lombroso  :  Loc.  cit. 

»G.  Ballet:  "Swedenborg;  History  of  a  Visionary  of  the  Eigh- 
teenth Century,"  1890. 

[249! 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

the  cult  of  the  New  Jerusalem  and  who  was  the 
most  fertile  and  original  of  all  the  hallucinatory 
mystics. 

Darwin  *  appears  to  have  suffered  from  serious 
chronic  neurasthenia,  and  Wechniakoff  describes 
the  hallucinations  of  Fries. 

6.  A  Few  Great  Musicians 

1.  Schumann'  became  lypemaniac.  He  was  pur- 
sued by  table-turners  "  who  could  tell  him  every- 
thing"; after  their  fall  Mendelssohn  and  Bee- 
thoven used  to  tell  him  musical  combinations. 
He  tried  to  commit  suicide.  He  died  at  forty-six 
years  of  age  in  the  asylum  of  Dr.  Richards  at 
Endenich,  near  Bonn  (Regnard),  and  at  the  au- 
topsy they  found  cranial  osteophytes,  thickening 
of  the  meninges,  and  atrophy  of  the  convolutions.' 

2.  Donizetti^  died  of  general  paresis. 

Cabanes'  has  studied  Donizetti's  mental  dis- 
order. He  became  somber  and  defiant.  A  few 
months  later  he  was  committed  to  a  sanitarium 
at  Ivry.     He  no  longer  answered  nor  recognized 

*  Hahn :  "  The  Neurasthenia  of  Charles  Darwin,"  Chronique 
Mddicale,  1901,  p.  441. 

'  Lombroso :  Loc.  cit. 

*  A  recent  study  by  Mobius  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  Schu- 
mann had  dementia  praecox,  and  not  paresis,  as  has  been  thought. 
-[Ed.] 

*  Moreau  du  Tours :  Loc.  cit. 

•Cabanas:  Chronique  Mddicale,  1906,  p.  153. 

[250] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

any  one.  One  hand  was  paralyzed,  and  he  would 
guzzle  his  soup  like  an  animal.  At  one  time  he 
showed  that  he  thought  he  had  something  on  top 
of  his  head  which  he  could  not  dislodge.  He  was 
sent  away  from  Ivry  and  died  at  Bergamo  at  the 
house  of  his  nephew  on  April  8,  1848. 

3.  Chopin  ^  during  his  whole  life  suffered  from 
excessive  nervousness,  which  grew  worse  at  times 
and  was  such  a  perpetual  torment  to  him  that  it 
caused  George  Sand  to  say  that  the  merest  trifle, 
the  wrinkle  in  a  rose-leaf,  the  shadow  of  a  fly, 
would  make  him  bleed.  He  died  of  tuberculosis 
at  the  age  of  thirty-nine;  his  sister  died  of  the 
same  disease  at  sixteen. 

4.  In  connection  with  Wagner,  Cabanes'  has 
compared  two  curious  criticisms  of  Nietzsche  and 
Nordau.  Nietzsche  said,  "  Wagner  is  diseased,"  a 
"typical  decadent."  "The  problems  which  he 
puts  upon  the  stage  are  purely  hysterical  prob- 
lems." The  explosiveness  of  his  temperament, 
his  irritable  sensibility,  his  taste,  which  always 
demanded  the  most  highly  seasoned  foods,  his 
instability  which  he  disguised  by  principles,  and, 
above  all,  the  choice  of  his  heroes  and  his  heroines, 
which,  considered  from  the   physiological  stand- 

'  Cabanas  :  "Celebrated  Phthisicals.  The  Disease  of  Chopin, 
According  to  Unpublished  Documents,"  Chronique  M^dicale, 
1899,  p.  673. 

*  Cabanas:  Chronique  M^dicale,  1903,  p.  674. 

[251] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

point,  form  a  gallery  of  patients ;  all  these  com- 
bined form  a  disease  picture  which  leaves  no 
doubt  that  Wagner  was  a  neuropath.  To  physi- 
cians and  neurologists  Wagner  represents  the  most 
interesting,  at  least  a  very  complete,  case. 

Max  Nordau  says  "  that  Richard  Wagner  is  ac- 
cused of  having  a  greater  degree  of  degeneracy 
than  all  the  degenerates  that  we  have  thus  far  seen 
put  together.  The  stigmata  which  are  found  in 
him  are  most  complete  and  richly  developed.  He 
presents  in  his  general  mental  constitution  perse- 
cutory delusions,  ideas  of  grandeur  and  mysticism ; 
in  his  instincts  a  vague  philanthropy,  anarchism, 
and  a  spirit  of  revolt  and  contradiction;  in  his 
writings  are  found  all  the  characteristics  of  grapho- 
mania,  i.e.^  of  incoherence,  flight  of  ideas,  and  a 
tendency  toward  silly  puns,  with,  as  a  fundamental 
element  of  his  nature,  a  characteristic  emotional- 
ism that  is  both  erotic  and  religious." 

5.  Mozart*  is  the  type  of  precocious  mind.  He 
played  the  harpsichord  at  three  years  of  age,  ac- 
companied quartets  and  composed  concertos  at 
five,  and  undertook  his  first  concert  tour  in  Vienna 
at  six.  He  was  extremely  nervous.  At  the  age 
of  ten  one  had  only  to  show  him  a  trumpet  and  he 
would  run  away,  if  one  persisted  he  would  disap- 

'Barraud:  "What  Was  Mozart's  Disease?"  Chronique  Mrfdi- 
cale,  1905,  p.  737. 

[252] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

pear.  At  fifteen  he  fell  in  love  with  a  girl  ten 
years  older  than  himself.  He  accomplished  an 
enormous  amount  of  work/  but  his  constitution 
became  enfeebled  very  early.  He  would  faint  or 
have  to  go  to  bed  for  nothing  at  all.  In  the  last 
months  of  his  life  he  was  possest  "  of  a  dreadful  fixt 
idea,  a  truly  insane  hallucination."  He  thought 
he  was  obliged  to  work  upon  his  own  funeral 
mass.  He  constantly  saw  before  him  a  man  who 
commanded  him  to  compose  this  requiem.  "  I  al- 
ways see  him  standing  there ;  he  hurries  me  and 
incessantly  asks  me  about  it  and  urges  me  to  com- 
pose in  spite  of  myself,  and  when  I  wish  to  stop, 
the  rest  tires  and  harasses  me  more  than  the 
work." 

6.  Beethoven  became  deaf  at  the  age  of  thirty, 
that  is  to  say,  he  never  heard  his  most  beautiful 
masterpieces  played.'  At  the  same  time  he  was  a 
very  eccentric  character.  "  A  sort  of  genial  dis- 
order reigned  in  his  mind."  He  preferred  ice- 
water  to  wash  in.  He  always  used  several  pitchers 
of  it  for  his  toilet.  He  would  lift  it  up  with  his 
hands,  scolding  all  the  while,  and  dash  a  quantity 

'  He  composed  179  works,  "  the  task  of  a  Titan,"  and  died  at  the 
age  of  thirty-five. 

*  Klotz-Forest :  "  The  Deafness  of  Beethoven  ,**  Chronique  Mddi- 
cale,  1905,  p.  321;  Baratoux  and  Marcel  Natier,  ibid.,  p.  492; 
Pierre  Bonnier  et  Garnault,  ibid.,  p.  521;  Klotz-Forest:  "The 
Last  Illness  and  Death  of  Beethoven,"  ibid.,  1906,  pp.  209,  241. 

[253] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

of  water  on  his  face  and  his  hair  without  noticing 
that  it  made  a  pool  on  the  floor,  in  which  he 
splashed  about  like  a  duck.  Often  the  water 
would  go  through  the  floor  and  stain  the  ceilings 
below;  ...  in  his  endeavor  to  mitigate  the  heat 
which  frequently  inconvenienced  him  while  at 
work  he  would  often  plunge  his  head  into  a  basin 
of  the  coldest  water  possible.  He  also  had  a  habit, 
which  was  none  the  less  troublesome,  of  going  off 
some  fine  morning  and  of  staying  whole  days  in 
the  heart  of  the  woods,  always  composing  and  ex- 
posing his  head,  which  was  always  uncovered,  to 
dampness  and  storm.  He  seems  to  have  died  of 
atrophic  alcoholic  cirrhosis. 

7.  Rossini's  psychic  disturbances  have  recently 
been  brought  to  notice  by  the  Chronique  Medicale^ 
which  has  called  attention  to  the  study  of  Filippi 
(1892). 

Rossini  suffered  from  severe  neurasthenic  at- 
tacks from  his  fifty-fifth  year.^  In  1850  he  had 
shown  some  very  apparent  psychic  and  cerebral 
disturbances,  which  grew  worse  until  1852.  He 
became  deprest  and  often  was  taken  with  fits  of 
weeping,  attacks  of  despair,  and  impulsions  to  sui- 
cide. He  complained  chiefly  of  an  intolerable 
sense  of  coldness  in  his  hands  and  of  lack  of  sleep. 
"...  I  feel  all  the  miseries  of  a  woman,"  said  he 

*  1906,  p.  225.  ^  He  was  born  fn  1792. 

[254] 


SOCIAL  VALUE   OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

in  1854,  "  the  only  thing  that  I  lack  is  a  uterus." 
He  tried  magnetism  without  success  and  returned 
to  Paris  in  1855  for  hydrotherapy.  In  nineteen 
years  Rossini  had  written  thirty-six  operas;  he 
suddenly  ceased  to  write  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight, 
after  having  written  "  William  Tell." 

8.  Berlioz  ^  relates  how  one  day,  having  to  write 
an  article  and  seeing  nothing  come  from  his  pen,  he 
was  taken  with  a  frightful  despair.  With  a  kick 
of  his  foot  he  broke  his  guitar  and  seized  his  pistol 
with  the  intention  of  putting  an  end  to  his  days. 
This  attempt  at  suicide  was  repeated  later.  His 
monomania  of  believing  that  he  was  unfortunate 
and  persecuted,  his  habit  of  attaching  the  utmost 
importance  to  trivial  details,  the  credulity  with 
which  he  regarded  the  visions  of  Swedenborg, 
who  pretended  to  know  the  language  of  demons ; 
all  of  these  eccentricities,  in  a  word,  as  Frederick 
Hellouin  has  very  well  put  it,  seemed  to  be  the 
expression  of  some  sort  of  lack  of  coordination 
in  a  man  on  whom  the  shadow  of  such  a  disease 
has  fallen.  Berlioz  suffered,  it  appears,  in  the 
latter  part  of  his  life  from  intestinal  neuralgia, 
and  his  death  was  preceded  by  epileptiform  con- 
vulsions. 


'"The  Neuropathy  of  Berlioz,"  Chronique  Medicale,  1906,  p. 
312. 

[^55  1 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

7.  Celebrated  Epileptics  and  Suicides 

I.  I  have  already  spoken  of  Dostoiewsky  and  of 
Flaubert.  Lombroso  also  cites  as  having  been 
epileptic  Napoleon,  Moliere,  Julius  Caesar/  Pe- 
trarch, Peter  the  Great  and  his  son,  Mohammed, 
Hendeln,  Swift,  Richelieu,  and  St.  Paul. 

This,  however,  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
scientifically  demonstrated  for  several  of  these. 

Charles  V.  was  the  son  of  an  insane  man  and  a 
grandson  of  a  melancholic.  He  stuttered,  and,  ac- 
cording to  Michelet,  seems  to  have  had  epileptic 
attacks  in  his  youth.' 

Gelineau^  says  that  Aristotle  was  the  first  to 
observe  that  epilepsy  attacked  many  men  of  talent 
and  intelligence.  Then  he  names  as  epileptics 
Hercules,  Ajax,  Empedocles,  Merachus  the  Syra- 
cusan,  Saul,  Macbeth,  Socrates,  Livius  Drusus, 
Amurat,  Newton,  Moliere,  Pascal,  Schiller,  Mo- 
zart, Paganini,*  Wagner,  and  Mme.  Malibran. 
He,  however,  eliminates  Napoleon*  from  his  list, 
as  Michaut'  effaces  Richelieu  and  Moliere.    Re- 


*See  Dubois  d'Amiens  :  L'Acaddmie  de  Mdd.,  1868. 

*Moreau  de  Tours:  Loc.  cit. 

*Gelineau:  "Celebrated  Epileptics,"  Chronique  M^dicale,  1900, 

P-  545- 

'  Paganini  was  also  subject  to  catalepsy. 

'See  Cabanas:    "Indiscretions  of  History,"  3d  s.,   1906,  and  J. 
Noir:  Progr^s  Mddical,  1906,  p.  421. 

•Michaut:  Chronique  Mddicale,  1900,  p.  673. 
[256] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

gnault  ^  has  been  very  justly  criticized  concerning 
epileptics.  He  includes  in  the  neurosis  "anybody 
who  is  subject  to  an  attack  of  fury,"  like  Hercules, 
A jax,  and  Saul ;  those  who  have  attacks  of  vertigo 
or  hysteria  or  absent-mindedness  due  to  a  fixt 
idea.  This  whole  subject  should  be  submitted 
to  a  severe  revision. 

2.  According  to  Lombroso,  the  Hst  of  great 
men  who  have  committed  suicide  is  interminable. 
It  is  headed  by  the  names  of  Zenon,  Aristotle, 
Hegesippus,  Lucretius,  Lucian,  and  comes  down 
to  Chatterton  and  David. 

Others  who  have  thought  seriously  of  it  or  have 
made  attempts  are  Chateaubriand,  Lamartine, 
Dupuytren,  Cooper,  Pariset,  Cavour,  and  George 
Sand.  Moreau  de  Tours  adds  St.-Simon  as  one 
who  committed  suicide  under  conditions  which 
denoted  mental  disorder.  Trelat  cites  the  author 
Saint-Edme,  who  put  himself  to  death  and  "  who 
minutely  described  the  last  impressions  of  his  last 
night."  In  Figaro  (December  i6,  1899)  i^^Y  be 
found  the  following:  "We  have  just  learned  of 
the  death  of  Planitz,  a  very  widely  read  German 
author,  who  has  killed  himself  during  an  attack  of 
melancholia.  It  is  now  a  rather  long  time  since 
Marc  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  foreshadowing  the 
modern   'Suicide    Club,'   established    the   'Syria 

'F^lix  Regnault:  Revue  de  I'Hypnotisme,  1900,  1901,  p.  270. 
17  [257I 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Posthumous  Academy,'  composed  of  persons  de- 
termined to  die  and  whose  sole  interest  in  life  was 
to  find  the  pleasantest  means  of  gracefully  depart- 
ing this  life."  * 

III.     RfiSUMfi   AND    CONCLUSIONS 

The  Relations  of   Intellectual  Superiority 
TO  the   Psycho-Neurosis 

There  are   two  things  which  must  certainly  be 

noted  at  the  conclusion   of  this   chapter:^  First, 

not  all  the  facts  quoted  have  equal  documentary 

value.     Many  may  be  inexact  or  open  to  question. 

I  have  tried  nevertheless  to  complete  and  to  verify 

the  somewhat  questionable  statements  of   Lom- 

broso  by  those  of  other  authors,  and  it  seems  to  me 

'  that  the  most  critical  must  admit  this  fact,  that 

t  intellectual  superiors  frequently  possess  psychic 

I  dejects  which  are  sometimes  very  marked. 

In  the  second  place  there  is  great  disparity  be- 
tween the  various  subjects,  as  much  from  the 
point  of  view  of  their  intellectual  superiority  as 
from  that  of  their  psychoneuroses.  Yet  this  is  of 
but  slight  importance  to  my  theme;  it  is  sufficient 

'  Moreau  de  Tours:  "Les  Excentriques,"  £tudes  Psycholo- 
gique  et  Anecdotique,  1894. 

'In  the  work  of  Lauvriere,  already  cited,  one  will  find  an  extended 
list  of  intellectual  superiors  and  psychoneuroses  which  will  com- 
plete the  present  chapter.  One  will  also  find  names  to  add  to  my 
list  in  Gelineau's  work,  already  cited. 

[258] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

to  say  that  these  individuals  with  psychic  defects 
may  often  have  a  high  social  value,  and  this  ap- 
pears to  me  to  have  been  demonstrated. 

This,  then,  is  the  question:  What  are  the  rela- 
tions which  unite  this  intellectual  superiority  and 
a  psychoneurosis  which  is  so  often  found  together 
in  the  same  individual?  The  most  distinguished 
among  those  who  have  studied  this  question  have 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  intellectual  supe- , 
riority  is  a  consequence,  an  effect,  a  symptom  of 
the  neurosis,  and  they  have  finally  come  to  iden- 
tify genius  and  insanity  in  their  essence. 

Diderot  (cited  by  Lombroso)  had  already  said: 
"  Oh,  how  near  genius  lies  to  insanity !  Those 
whom  heaven  has  marked  for  either  good  or  ill  are 
subject  more  or  less  to  these  symptoms.  They 
have  them  more  or  less  frequently,  more  or  less 
violently.  They  are  shut  up  or  put  in  chains,  or 
else  they  have  statues  erected  to  their  memory." 
And  elsewhere:  "Men  of  a  pensive  and  melan- 
cholic temperament  need  but  the  slightest  de- 
rangement of  their  minds  to  show  that  extraordi- 
nary and  almost  divine  perception  which  flashes 
out  at  intervals  and  which  culminates  in  ideas 
which  are  sometimes  sublime  and  sometimes  in- 
sane" (Gilbert  Ballet). 

Moreau  de  Tours  was  the  first  scientifically  to 
formulate  this  famous  doctrine:  "  Genius,  that  is 

[259I 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

to  say,  the  highest  expression,  the  ne  plus  ultra 
of  intellectual  activity,  is  a  neurosis!  Why  not? 
We  may  easily  accept  this  definition."  It  states 
succinctly  the  morbid  nature  of  genius. 

Lombroso  has  gone  much  further  than  this  and 
has  not  only  taught  that  genius  is  a  neurosis,  but 
according  to  him  genius  is  a  special  neurosis. 
It  is  epilepsy.  "After  all  this,"  says  he  (page 
482),  "we  can,  without  fear,  state  that  genius 
is  a  true  degenerative  psychosis,  belonging  to  the 
group  of  moral  insanities  which  may  temporarily 
spring  from  other  psychoses  and  take  their  form, 
but  always  conserving  certain  special  characteris- 
tics which  distinguish  it  from  the  others,"  and 
(page  484)  "  genius  creation  is  a  form  of  degener- 
ative psychosis  belonging  to  the  family  of  the  epi- 
lepsies." 

Thus,  as  Regnard  has  said,  they  have  lumped 
the  criminals  to  the  great  men.  The  hypothesis 
of  Lombroso  has  been  energetically  combated  in 
various  quarters  (Regnard,  Toulouse,  Henri  Joly, 
Rabaud  .  .  .  )  and  can  not  be  scientifically  up- 
held at  the  present  time. 

In  the  first  place  the  coincidence  of  epilepsy 
and  of  genius  is  not  very  frequent.  The  examples 
already  cited  are  few  in  number  and  for  certain  of 
them  the  diagnosis  is  in  need  of  discussion  and  of 
revision. 

[260] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

To  this,  Lombroso  replies  that  genius  is  a  non- 
convulsive  manifestation  of  epilepsy,  that  it  may 
replace  the  convulsions  and  be  their  equivalent, 
but  then  he  ought  to  find  some  of  the  characteris- 
tic epileptic  symptoms  in  addition  to  the  manifes- 
tations of  genius.  Therefore  there  is  nothing  in 
this.  Epilepsy  has  by  no  means  the  monopoly 
of  the  psychic  defects  noted  in  many  superiors. 
Sudden  onsets  and  intermissions,  unconscious- 
ness, and  ulterior  amnesia,  all  of  which  are  found 
accompanying  inspiration,  are  also  found  in  sim- 
ple distraction,  and  one  can  by  no  means  say  that 
all  great  distractions  are  epileptic* 

Among  the  most  seductive  ideas  of  Moreau  de] 
Tours  there  is  still  one  idea  to  refute:   that  is,  thej 
notion  that  intellectual  superiority  should  be  con- 
sidered as  a  disease,  as  a  neurotic  manifestation. 

There  may  perhaps  be  morbid  symptoms  char- 
acterized by  exaggerated,  or  excess  of,  function. 
And  yet  I  believe  that  there  is  always  a  little  touch 
of  para  in  all  the  hyper  disturbances.  At  all 
events,  not  all  exaggeration  of  function  is  morbid. 

'"The  narrow  ideas  concerning  madness, which  have  broadened 
in  our  days,  have  led  our  historic  judgments  seriously  astray  in 
matters  of  this  kind.  A  state  in  which  one  says  things  of  which 
one  has  no  knowledge,  or  when  thought  takes  place  involuntarily 
and  without  control,  now  renders  a  man  liable  to  be  shut  up  as 
suffering  from  a  hallucination.  In  former  times  this  was  called 
prophecy  and  inspiration."  E.  Renan  :  "  Life  of  Jesus,"  cited  by 
Gilbert  Ballet,  loc.  cit.^  p.  223. 

[261] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

In  order  that  functional  exaggeration  be  consid- 
ered as  diseased  it  is  necessary  for  it  to  hinder 
normal  functioning;  thus  chronic  movements,  ex- 
cessive motor  disturbances  hinder  the  normal 
motor  functions;  but  intellectual  superiority  does 
not  interfere  with  normal  intellectual  activity;  on 
the  contrary,  it  exalts  it ;  therefore  it  is  not  morbid. 

Another  thing  that  proves  that  intellectual  su- 
periority is  not  a  consequence  or  a  symptom  of  a 
neurosis,  is  that  many  people  may,  for  example, 
have  a  neurosis  like  that  of  Pascal  without  having 
his  genius,  exactly  as  they  might  have  a  nose  like 
Cyrano's  without  having  his  wit,  or  might  be  pock- 
marked like  Mirabeau  or  Danton  without  having 
their  eloquence. 

The  hypothesis  of  Moreau  de  Tours  is  there- 
fore no  more  tenable  than  that  of  Lombroso. 

Another  hypothesis,  which  is  upheld  by  Reveille 
Parise,  would  maintain  an  inverse  relationship  be- 
tween intellectual  superiority  and  neurosis,  i.e.^  the 
neurosis  is  the  consequence  of  the  superiority ;  and, 
in  fact,  intellectual  overwork,  the  strenuous  life, 
and  the  desire  to  know  for  oneself  every  sensation 
in  life,  certainly  drain  the  nervous  system  of  su- 
periors, and  may,  in  many  cases,  aid  powerfully  in 
the  development  of  the  neurosis. 

"  Thinkers    and     savants,"  says    WechniakofiF, 

"who,  in  a  given  time,  have  devoted  themselves  to 

[262] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

a  more  or  less  coordinated  complex  mental  exer- 
cise of  the  many  and  various  elements  of  their 
nervous  system,  men  of  pronounced  originality, 
such  as  the  students  of  special  and  general  philos- 
ophies, have  succumbed  to  a  premature  biologic  de- 
cadence." Tardieu  says  that "  while  well-balanced 
people,  whether  brilliant  or  mediocre,  avoid  nu- 
merous perils  to  which  the  more  rash  succumb,  ex- 
haustion, an  element  of  tire,  is  the  fate  of  the  emo- 
tional and  those  who  live  too  rapidly  and  plunge 
into  passionate  excesses,  who  live  by  gambling 
and  competition,  adventures  and  follies,  such 
pass  from  one  intoxication  to  another,  and  over- 
strain keeps  their  nerves  in  perpetual  excitement 
by  perilous  adventures."  Arvede  Barine  shows 
that  a  host  of  human  beings  were  driven  to  follow 
the  footsteps  of  Gerard  de  Nerval  "  by  the  harass- 
ing tire  of  a  hard  and  wearing  life,  or  the  pressure 
of  a  too  complicated  civilization,  or  through  the 
use  of  alcohol  or  morphine."  Sainte-Beuve 
(quoted  by  Cabanes)  has  said  that  a  writer  does 
not  write  only  by  means  of  pure  thought,  but 
with  his  blood  and  his  muscles.  He  therefore 
uses  his  whole  body. 

All  this  is  true.  But  the  neuroses  developed  in 
youth,  or  even  in  infancy,  the  hereditary  neuro- 
pathic defects  observed  in  the  superior,  as  well  as 
in  his  ascendants,  his  descendants,  and  his  collat- 

[263] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

erals,  can  not  be  explained  in  this  manner.^  In 
the  same  way  when  Baudelaire  would  take  to 
drink  in  order  to  allay  the  terror  which  his  hallu- 
cinations caused  him,  one  could  not  attribute  these 
hallucinations  to  alcohol.  One  can  not  therefore 
formulate  in  a  general  law  the  relationship  which 
would  make  a  neurosis  derived  from  intellectual 
superiority. 

What  then  shall  we  conclude  ? 
^  Scientifically,  one  thing  only  is  demonstrated : 
that  is,  the  Jrequent  coexistence  q/  intellectual  supe- 
riority and  a  neurosis  in  the  same  individual. 
This  coexistence  is  too  frequent  to  be  fortuitous, 
and  one  should  not  say,  with  Henri  Joly,  that 
Lombroso's  book  has  nothing  in  it  but  a  simple 
and  puerile  system,  and  that  everybody's  head  may 
be  afflicted  as  well  as  his  heart  or  his  intestines, 

'According  to  Lombroso,  the  sons  of  Tacitus,  Bernardin  St. 
Pierre,  Mercadante,  Donizetti,  Volta,  Manzoni,  a  daughter  of  V. 
Hugo,  the  sister  of  Kant,  the  brother  of  Zimmermann  were  insane. 
The  son  of  Scipio  Africanus  was  an  idiot,  and  the  son  of  Cicero 
was  a  drunkard.  The  father  of  Beethoven  was  a  drunkard, 
Byron's  mother  was  partly  insane,  and  his  father  dissolute,  impu- 
dent, and  queer  ;  Kenan's  paternal  uncle  was  a  demi-fou  and  led  a 
wandering  life,  and  his  grandfather  lost  his  mind  through  grief  in 
1815.  Moreau  de  Tours  adds  other  analogous  examples  on  the 
heredity  of  Frederick  the  Great,  Richelieu,  and  Hegel.  Henri 
Joly  says  that  a  sister  of  Robespierre  was  a  patient  at  La  Sal- 
petri^re,  and  adds  this  passage  from  Aristotle  :  "The  energetic 
races  turn  into  wild  extravagant  characters  like  the  descendants 
of  Alcibiades  and  of  Denys  the  Ancient ;  the  calm  races  become 
sottish  and  stupid ;  witness  the  descendants  of  Pericles  and  Soc- 
rates."   Sec  also  Fdre:  "  La  Famille  Ndvropathique,"  189,  p.  448. 

[264] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

and  that  certain  superiors  become  insane  just  as 
others  have  inflammation  of  the  lungs.  Neither 
must  one  say,  with  Faguet,  that  the  neuroses  ap- 
pear more  frequently  in  superiors  because  they  are 
better  known,  nor  with  Bourget  that  such  neuroses 
are  either  a  bluff  or  a  wilful  exaggeration,  a  pose 
or  a  form  of  snobbishness,  and  that  they  are  put 
on  or  magnified  for  the  mystification  of  the 
philistine.^ 

No!    the  law  of  frequent  coincidence  is  estab- 
lished, but  the  derivation  is  not,  and  the  truth  lies 
simply  in  the  idea  of  a  common  foundation.     In- 
tellectual superiority  and  psychoneuroses  are  dis-l 
tinct  branches  springing  from  a  common  trunk. 

This  common  root  is  characterized  by  a  very 
marked  nervous  temperament  and  an  acquired  or 
hereditary  neuropathic  state. 

Furthermore,  the  psychic  centers  are  essentially 
multiple  and  complex;  they  do  not  form  in  any 
person  a  homogeneous  whole  of  which  the  parts 
are  all  uniformly  developed.  It  can  be  under- 
stood how  in  the  same  person  certain  centers  may 
develop  exuberantly,  while  others  suffer  and  be- 
come diseased.  A  curious  example  of  such  un- 
equal   development    of    the   psychic    centers    is 

'The  Philistine  is  evidently  a  healthy,  well-balanced  individual ; 
as  Max  Nordau  has  said,  he  is  a  lucky  fellow  who  has  always  suc- 
ceeded ;  he  is  the  normal  man  of  Lombroso. 

[265] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

furnished  by  calculators  such  as  Inaudi  and 
Diamanti.* 

That  is  to  say,  that  when  the  same  man  is  both 
neurotic  and  superior,  he  is  neurotic  by  virtue  of 
one  zone  of  his  nervous  system,  and  superior  be- 
cause of  another.  When  Pasteur  discovered  the 
remedy  for  hydrophobia  he  had  had  a  paralysis 
due  to  a  brain  lesion.  Evidently  the  neurons  with 
which  he  made  his  discovery  were  not  the  same  as 
those  affected  by  his  disease. 

The  common  trunk  which  unites  superiority 
and  neuroses  is  a  teinperam,ent^  but  is  not  a  dis- 
ease. 

Medically,  therefore,  genius  and  superiority  are 
by  no  means  to  be  considered  as  diseases  to  be 
treated  and  cured.  The  superior  keeps  his  high 
social  standing,  which  he  must  protect  and  develop ; 
he  is  not  necessarily  ill,^  and  if  he  be  so  it  is  not 
by  reason  of  his  superiority,  but  because  of  a  coex- 
isting neurosis  which  it  is  admissible  to  advise 
upon  and  treat,  to  take  measures  against  it,  and,  if 
possible,  to  cure. 

In  rejecting  the  superior  individual  in  a  group 
of  healthy  people  one  does  not  as  a  result  thrust 


*  See  Binet :  "  Psychologic  des  Grandes  Calculateurs  et  Joueurs 
d'Echecs,"  1894. 

'"Neuropathy  is  not  Indispensable  to  Genius"  (Fdrd),     "Pa- 
thology of  the  Emotions,"  1892,  p.  529. 

[266] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

him  into  the  mediocre  class.  By  lopping  off  a  dis- 
eased branch,  healthy  branches  grow  all  the  more 
vigorously.  It  would  have  been  wholly  ridiculous 
to  have  wished  to  cure  Pascal  of  his  genius,  which 
was  not  a  disease ;  but  if  he  could  have  been  cured 
of  his  neurosis  his  genius  would  have  lost  nothing 
by  it,  but  quite  the  contrary.  If  it  had  been  pos- 
sible to  prevent  or  cure  the  madness  of  Guy  de 
Maupassant,  the  number  of  his  masterpieces  would 
certainly  have  been  increased. 

I  believe  then  that  I  can  say,  as  I  said  in  1900,  \ 
gejtius  is  not  a  neurosis ;  but  a  7ieurosis  is  more  \ 
ojten  the  penalty  of  genius. 

Lauvriere  concludes  his  recent  study  of  the 
question  thus:  "As  it  is  materially  as  well  as  log- 
ically almost  impossible  that  one  and  the  same  brain 
should  have  an  equal  altho  disproportionate  devel- 
opment of  all  the  cerebral  elements,  it  is  conse- 
quently natural  that  we  can  scarcely  expect  to  find 
universal  geniuses  any  more  than  geniuses  who 
are  perfectly  well  balanced,  and  that  in  our  poor 
and  very  imperfect  world  we  ought  to  be  content 
with  partial  geniuses  whose  inferiorities,  of  which 
we  occasionally  catch  a  glimpse,  are  too  often  only 
the  darker  accompaniment  of  more  shining  supe- 
riorities." 

Intellectual  superiority,  therefore,  is  not  a  symp- 
tom of  neurosis.     The  neurosis  is  rather  the  scar 

[267] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

or  accident  of  superiority.     It  is  not  the  cause,  it 
is  the  obstacle/ 

I  will  end  with  these  conclusions,  which  seem 
naturally  to  follow  from  the  preceding  develop- 
ment: 

1.  Many  intellectual  superiors  have  more  or  less 
marked  psychic  defects. 

2.  Many  have  psychoneuroses.  Therefore  cer- 
tain of  the  semi-insane  have  a  high  social  value 
which  distinguishes  them  absolutely  from  the 
insane.' 

3.  Psychoneuroses  and  intellectual  superiority, 
when  they  coexist  in  the  same  individual,  are  not 
consequently  the  same  or  dependent  the  one  upon 
another.  The  fact  that  certain  demifous  have  a 
social  value  does  not  do  away  with  the  duties  and 
rights  of  society  toward  these  patients,  either  in 

'As  L.  Bourdeau  has  said,  "well-balanced  faculties  do  not  as  a 
rule  lead  to  anything  more  than  happy  mediocrity.  The  tenden- 
cies of  genius  depress  certain  faculties  and  exalt  others.  There 
is  in  genius  an  element  of  nervousness  which  gives  it,  as  it  were, 
its  force  and  energy,"  or,  as  I  would  like  to  add,  too  often  limits 
its  power. 

*  "  Confirmed  insanity  is  the  greatest  of  misfortunes,  and  it  is 
quite  enough.  As  to  the  lighter  forms  of  mental  aberration  they 
have  in  many  cases  a  wholly  different  significance,  in  that  a  slight 
degree  of  madness  is  equivalent,  for  some  minds,  to  an  inheritance 
of  nobility,  so  that  one  can  say  without  exaggeration  that  when 
the  day  comes  that  there  are  no  longer  any  demifous  the  civilized 
world  will  perish— not  from  its  excess  of  wisdom,  but  from  its 
excessive  mediocrity."  Cullerre  :  "  Les  Fronti^res  de  la  Folie," 
1888,  p.  9. 

[268] 


SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

the  matter  of  taking  care  of  them  or  of  protecting 
itself  against  them. 

The  first  conclusion  is  the  end  of  the  present 
chapter;  the  second  is  the  justification  of  the 
chapter  to  follow. 


t269] 


CHAPTER  V 

Rights  and  Duties  of  Society  toward  the  Semi- 
insane 

I.  Harmfulness  of  the  Semi-insane. 

1.  Misdemeanors  of  the  Semi-insane  in  the  Regular  Enjoyment 

of  their  Rights  as  Free  Mdn. 

1.  The  Semi-insane  may   Live  in  Freedom,  in  the   Regular 

and  Legal  Enjoyment  of  their  Rights  as  Citizens. 

2.  Misdemeanors  which  They  May  Perform  in  this  R61e. 

a.  Marriage. 

b.  Malicious  Deeds. 

2.  Crimes  of  the  Semi-insane.    Semi-insanity  and  Criminality. 

1.  Relations  of   the   Criminal   Born  and  of   Moral   Insanity 

according  to  Lombroso. 

2.  Criticism  of  Lombroso's  Ideas. 

3.  Semi-insanity  and  Criminality. 

II.  Treatment  and  Prophylaxis  of  the  Semi-insane. 

1 .  Treatment. 

Duties  of  Society  in  Regard  to  the  Treatment  of  the  Semi- 
insane  Poor. 

2.  Prophylaxis. 

1.  Possibility  of  Individual  Family  and  Social  Prophylaxis 

for  the  Semi-insane. 

2.  Medical    Supervision    of    Marriage  (Foundation    of    the 

Family). 

3.  Medical  Supervision  of  the  Bringing  up  of  the  Child  and 

the  Making  of  a  Citizen  (Physical,  Intellectual,  and  Moral 

Education). 

a.  Physical  Training. 

a  First  Year. 

/3  From  First  to  Seventh  Year. 

y  From  Seventh  to  Thirteenth  Year. 
[270] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE   SEIMI-INSANE 

6  From  Thirteenth  to  Eighteenth  Year, 
b  Intellectual  and  Moral  Training :  Academic  Education 

and   Supervision,  Choice  of  a   Profession,  Military 

Service,  Political  Life. 
4.  A  Few  General  Hygienic  Rules  for  those  with  Predisposi- 
tion to  Nervous  Disorders. 

a.  Causes  of  Nervous  Diseases. 

b.  Genital  Life,  Professional  and  Social  Life. 

in.  The  Semi-insane  and  the  Law.    Semi-responsibilty.    Limited 
or  Attenuated  Responsibility. 

1.  Medical  Idea  0/  Responsibility. 

1.  The  Medical  Idea  of  Responsibility  can  not  be  Based  on 

the  Philosophic  Notion  of  Free-will  or  of  Determinism. 

2.  It  is  only  on  a  Physiopathological  Basis  that  there  can  be 

Built  up  an  Idea  of  Medical  Responsibility  which  all 
Physicians  can  and  Ought  to  Accept,  whatever  may  be 
their  Philosophic  or  Religious  Convictions  on  Free-will 
and  the  Soul. 

3.  Responsibility  and  Culpability.     The   Physician  and  the 

Magistrate. 

4.  Medical  Idea  of  Responsibility  according  to  Contempora- 

neous Autliors. 

a.  The  Italian  School — Lombroso,  Ferri,  Garofalo. 

b.  Objections  by  the  French  School :  Fouillde  Paulhan. 

Tarde.     Ferri's  Reply. 

c.  The  Idea  of  Physiological  Responsibility  without  any 

Reference  to  the  Idea  (whether  Affirmative  or  Nega- 
tive) of  Free-will.     (Saleilles.) 

5.  The  Responsibility  of  a  Subject  is  Based  upon  the  Normal 

Condition  of  His  Psychic  Neurons. 

2.  Atiemiated  Responsibility . 

1.  Difficulties  and  Misunderstandings  of  the  Question.     Con- 

tradictory Opinions.     Denial  of  Responsibility. 

a.  Humorous  Denials. 

b.  Scientific  Negations. 

2.  Necessity  for  Distinguishing  between  the  Medical  Ques- 

tion of  Atten  ated  Responsibility  and  the  Social  Question 
of  the  Legal  Attitude  to  be  Adopted  toward  the  Semi- 
responsible. 

3.  Medical  Question  of  Attenuated  Responsibility. 

[271  J 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

a.  Statement  of  the  Doctrine. 

b.  Reply  to  Objections. 

c.  Confirmatory  Opinions  of  Various  Authors. 

d.  Conclusions. 

4.  Social  Question  of  the  Legal  Attitude  to  be  Adopted  to- 
ward the  Semi-insane. 

a.  Attenuated  Responsibility  in  Relation  to  the  Laws  as 

they   Stand.     (Certain    Legislations  Permit  a  much 
Greater  Abridgment  in  Special  Cases.) 

b.  Objection  to  the  System  of  Shortened  Punishments. 

c.  The  Principles  on  which  Reforms  Ought  to  be  Based. 

d.  Modifications  to  be  Brought  to  Bear  upon  Punishment. 

a  Diminution  of  Punishment. 

P  Special  Penitentiary  Regime, 
€.  Surveillance  and  Treatment  after  Punishment. 

a  Necessity  of  Legal  Obligation. — Medical  Supervi- 
sion and  Treatment  after  the  Expiration  of  a 
Sentence  should  be  Incorporated  in  the  Law. 

P  Special  Institutions  for  Surveillance  and  for  this 
Treatment. 

y  Duration  and  Limitation  of  this  Medical  Supervi- 
sion and  Treatment. 
/.  The  Authority  which  shall  Pronounce  upon  Attenuated 

Responsibility. 

a  Role  of  the  Physician. 

/3  Role  of  the  Judge. 

y  The  Necessity  of  Including  the  Semi-insane  and 
the  Idea  of  Attenuated  Responsibility  in  the  Re- 
form of  the  Law  of  1838. 

1  BELIEVE  that  I  have  shown  in  the  preceding 
*  chapter  that  the  semi-insane  are  very  often  in- 
telligent, so  intelligent,  in  fact,  that  they  may  be 
men  of  talent  and  even  of  genius,  and  conse- 
quently are  not  always  without  social  value,  but 
have  often  made  a  marked  difference  in  the  liter- 
ary or  artistic  progress  of  their  century.  In  the 
third  chapter  we  learned  that  the  semi-insane  are 

[272] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

sick  people  and  that  they  must  be  cared  for.  From 
the  two  chapters  combined  we  may  conclude  that 
if  we  must  care  for  them,  we  must  not  treat  them 
like  the  insane  and  deny  them  freedom  and  the 
right  to  public  life  by  declaring  them  incapable 
by  simply  shutting  them  up  unconditionally  in 
asylums. 

How  may  we  establish  the  legitimate  value  of 
the  present  chapter,  which  is  the  object  and  reason 
for  the  existence  of  this  book?  The  existence  of 
the  semi-insane,  such  as  we  know  them,  is  the 
starting-point  of  a  social  question  of  the  greatest 
importance:  What  ought  to  be  the  attitude  of 
society,  and  what  are  the  duties  and  rights  of 
society,  toward  them  ? 

To  state  this  very  important  and  difficult  ques- 
tion exactly  it  is  first  necessary  to  establish  the 
idea  of  which  we  have  had  glimpses  in  the  prece- 
ding pages,  but  which  I  have  not  yet  proved,  viz., 
the  idea  of  the  harm  which  the  semi-insane  may 
do. 

I.  HARMFULNESS   OF  THE  SEMI- 
INSANE 

The  semi-insane  are  hurtful  to  their  fellows, 

and  some  of  them  are  even  dangerous,  either  all 

through  life  or  at  least  at  certain  periods  of  their 

morbid  development.    They  may  at  first  be  per- 

i8  [273] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

nicious  without  committing  any  illegal  or  repre- 
hensible acts,  merely  by  the  exercise  of  their  rights 
as  free  men.  They  are  particularly  detrimental  to 
their  neighbors  and  to  society  when  they  marry 
and  establish  a  family  by  bearing  and  bringing  up 
children.  In  the  second  place  the  semi-insane  are 
sometimes  harmful  by  committing  misdemeanors 
and  real  crimes ;  they  set  fire  to  buildings,  they 
steal,  commit  violence,  attack,  and  even  assas- 
sinate. 

Roubinovitch  has  very  aptly  said:  "Under  the 
appearance  of  a  seeming  but  deceitful  lucidity, 
they  have  a  superficial  but  inconsistent  conscience, 
and,  above  all,  a  waxlike  will  which  never  succeeds 
in  governing  their  desires  and  low  instincts. 
When  these  latter  pursue  them,  like  the  fierce  and 
cruel  bloodhounds  of  which  Shakespeare  speaks 
in  one  of  his  works,  they  are  not  able  to  resist  them, 
and  simply  let  themselves  go,  as  they  often  tell  us, 
without  thinking  of  or  without  reflecting  upon  the 
consequences.  Some  insist  that  they  know  what 
is  right  and  what  is  wrong,  but  they  know  it  only 
theoretically.  When  they  are  possest  by  torment- 
ing desires  which  tempt  them,  their  conscience  is 
too  weak  to  stop  them,  while  their  natural  appe- 
tites, on  the  other  hand,  are  voracious  and 
insatiable." 

[274] 


SOCIETk^  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

I.  Misdemeanors  of  the  Semi-insane  in  the 
Regular  Enjoyment  of  Their  Rights  as 
Free  Men 

I.  From  all  the  medical  descriptions  which  I  at- 
tempted to  bring  together  as  a  whole  in  the  third 
chapter  it  is  clearly  evident  that  the  typical  charac- 
teristic of  semi-insanity  is  this  very  lucidity  which 
the  patients  retain;  they  appear  as  rational  in  pub- 
lic as  anybody  else;  as  a  result,  they  are  not  only 
permitted  to  go  about  freely,  but  they  enjoy  all 
the  rights  of  a  free  citizen ;  they  can  buy  and  sell, 
enter  upon  and  take  charge  of  business  affairs, 
marry  and  bring  up  a  family,  direct  the  education 
of  their  children,  and  draw  up  bequests  and  wills. 

"  The  lucid  semi-insane,"  says  Trelat,  "  in  spite 
of  their  unbalanced  condition,  can  answer  correctly 
any  questions  which  are  put  to  them ;  to  the  super- 
ficial observer  they  have  no  appearance  whatever 
of  insanity,  and  often  it  is  impossible  to  discover 
or  guess  their  condition  except  in  their  family  life." 
Also, "  the  persons  who  must  undergo  the  discom- 
forts of  their  presence  may  go  for  a  long  time 
without  receiving  any  sympathy  or  any  support 
from  outside.  It  is  not  only  the  laity  who  are 
deceived  in  such  instances,  but  even  physicians 
when  they  receive  the  secret  confidences  of  family 
troubles." 

[27Sl 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

This  is  not  so  often  seen  to-day,  for  the  ma- 
jority of  physicians  are  much  better  able  to  recog- 
nize semi-insanity  than  they  were  in  Trelat's  time 
(1861).  This  misconception  of  semi-insanity  on 
the  part  of  the  public  is  such  that  a  semi-insane 
man  may  often  make  everybody  believe  that  he 
really  is  persecuted.  "  The  pose  of  martyr,  which 
the  greater  number  of  them  are  prone  to  assume, 
often  leads  opinion  astray,"  adds  Trelat.  "  This 
is  one  of  the  greatest  misfortunes  of  the  situation, 
for  it  adds  unjust  accusation  to  suffering."  We 
shall  now  take  up  all  the  evils  which  can  be  com- 
mitted by  the  semi-insane  with  undisputed  liberty 
and  all  the  rights  which  the  law  permits  them. 

{a)  First  and  most  important,  they  unfortu- 
nately may  marry.  Parents,  far  from  opposing  their 
marriage,  more  often  encourage  it,  and  hide  the 
psychopathic  defects  of  the  fiance  from  the  other 
family.  "  There  are  very  few,"  says  Trelat,  "  who 
have  the  honest  courage  to  tell  the  truth."  And  as 
a  result  of  marriage  they  bring  misfortune  and 
suffering  to  their  partner. 

In  a  case  which  Trelat  describes,  "the  young 
woman  had  not  been  able  to  see  anything  but  the 
fine  figure  of  the  man  whose  titled  name  she  was 
going  to  take,  for  they  had  kept  her  in  ignorance 
of  his  mental  weakness  and  his  low  habits.  Barely 
a  week  had  passed  before  the  bride,  who  was  as 

[276] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEiMI-INSANE 

fresh  and  beautiful  and  charming  as  she  was 
young,  discovered  that  'M.  le  Comte  '  spent  all  his 
mornings  and  gave  his  whole  attention  to  making 
his  excrement  into  little  balls  and  arranging  them 
in  a  row  according  to  their  size  on  the  marble 
mantelpiece  in  front  of  the  clock." 

Furthermore,  one  meets  a  great  many  mono- 
maniacs "in  the  world  who  are  perfectly  free, 
mingling  in  affairs,  marrying,  and  transmitting  and 
propagating  their  infirmities,  and  afflicting  their 
families."  For  this  is  the  second  danger  of  the 
marriage  of  the  semi-insane ;  they  not  only  bring 
misfortune  to  their  households,  but  they  bequeath 
a  deplorable  heredity  to  the  family  which  they 
have  brought  into  the  world. 

The  marriage  of  the  lucid  semi-insane  "  is  al- 
ways unfortunate  for  the  partner,  and  very  often 
for  the  children  who  spring  from  such  a  union." 

{b)  The  malicious  deeds  of  certain  semi-insane 
are  innumerable.  "  There  exist  among  the  semi- 
insane  those  who,  while  conscious  of  all  that  they 
do,  occupy  themselves  with  nothing  except  to  plan 
and  carry  out  wicked  deeds.  Some  break  and  des- 
troy objects  of  greater  or  less  value,  either  per- 
mitting or  planning  to  have  suspicion  and  blame 
fall  upon  others;  some  do  not  hesitate  at  anything 
and  will  set  fire  to  buildings  whenever  they  get  a 
chance.     Others,  and  sometimes  the  same  as  those 

[277] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

we  were  speaking  of,  find  an  irresistible  and  keen 
pleasure  in  stirring  up  troubles  and  dissension 
among  those  around  them."  Such  a  patient  of 
Trelat's  had  frequently  been  convicted  of  thefts. 
"  This  woman,  who  could  speak  several  languages 
and  was  an  artist  and  musician,  alternately  led  a 
regular  life  and  one  of  the  most  disordered  and 
perverse  character.  She  would  at  times  give  her- 
self up  to  a  perfect  frenzy  of  debauch  and  to  the 
most  cleverly  concealed  thefts."  At  the  same 
time  this  low,  degraded  being  would,  by  her  ability 
in  speaking  languages  and  by  her  knowledge,  be 
able  to  make  a  most  favorable  impression  and  to 
be  received  everywhere  at  once.  She  was  a  num- 
ber of  times  introduced  into  educational  institu- 
tions where  she  actually  lived  for  a  greater  or  less 
time.  Others  ruin  their  family  by  their  inven- 
tions, their  escapades,  their  business  enterprises, 
and  their  absolutely  unconsidered  gifts. 

An  unhappy  woman  wrote  to  me  recently:  "I 
have  the  great  misfortune  to  be  the  mother  of  a 
malicious  unbalanced  son,  twenty  years  of  age. 
From  his  earliest  childhood  he  has  always  done 
wrong.  He  is  absolutely  unmoral ;  while  growing 
up,  his  vicious  tendencies  were  so  marked  that  we 
were  obliged  to  send  him  from  home.  He  has 
been  abroad,  where  he  continues  his  wicked  life ; 
he  is  very  anxious  that  I  should  let  him  come 

[278] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

back ;  but  I  am  in  an  agony  of  mind  to  know  what 
I  shall  do  with  him.  Liberty  for  such  a  conscience- 
less creature  is  not  admissible.  The  insane  asy- 
lum is  still  less  so.  Everybody,  even  those  around 
me,  consider  him  to  be  a  wicked  fellow,  but  in 
possession  of  his  reason.  At  twenty  years  of  age 
it  can  not  be  that  he  is  hopelessly  lost  both  to  his 
mother  and  to  society." 

What  shall  we  think  of  a  will  made  by  a  feeble- 
minded congenital  epileptic  as  observed  by  Trelat 
in  1841,  as  a  result  of  which  the  family  appointed 
legal  counsel  for  him  (without  taking  away  his  lib- 
erty to  make  a  will)?  Another  examination  made 
in  1845  declared  him  legally  incapable  of  managing 
his  own  affairs.  Trelat  and  all  alienists  quote  a 
great  many  examples  of  the  semi-insane;  in  fact, 
even  the  families  of  the  semi-insane  who  com- 
mitted suicide. 

Without  dwelling  longer  upon  this  subject,*  one 
may  get  an  idea  of  how  many  misdemeanors  the 
semi-insane  with  freedom  in  society  may  be  culpa- 
ble, and  one  can  understand  Trelat  writing  his 
own  work, less  in  the  interests  of  the  insane  "than 
in  the  interests  of  their  kin  and  absolutely  with 
the  object  of  declaring  a  dangerous  condition,  and 

'  See  again  Roubinovitch :  "  Les  Drftraqu^s  Nuisibles,"  Le 
Matin,  November  12,  1905;  Lucien  Descaves :  "  Demifolles,"  Lc 
Journal,  February  20,  1906. 

[279] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

of  diminishing  if  possible  the  number  of  unfortu- 
nate unions."  This  book,  he  has  said  elsewhere,  is 
entirely  devoted  to  the  examination  and  study  of 
the  semi-insane,  who,  of  all  human  beings  whose 
minds  are  afflicted,  are  the  most  compromising  or 
the  most  dangerous. 

2.  Crimes  of  the  Semi-insane,  Semi-insanity, 
AND  Criminality 

I.  Relations  of  the  Criminal-born  and  of  Moral 
Insanity  according  to  Lombroso. — We  know  Lom- 
broso's  ideas  and  from  what  a  narrow  point  of  view 
he  regards  the  doctrine  of  semi-insanity. 

According  to  the  celebrated  leader  of  the  Italian 
school,*  criminality  should  be  submitted  to  a  very 
narrow  and  exact  test  of  determinism ;  he  admits 
a  "  true  necessity  in  crime,"  then  distinguishes 
"with  great  exactness  the  criminal-born  not  only 
of  criminal  occasion  but  still  more  the  criminal 
insane  and  the  alcoholic,"  at  the  same  time  that 
he  effects  the  "fusion  between  the  two  concep- 
tions of  the  criminal-born  and  of  the  morally  in- 
sane, a  fusion  which  has  already  been  perceived 
and    affirmed     by   MM.   Mendel,   Bonvecchiato, 

'  C^sar  Lombroso:  "L'Homme  Criminel.  Criminel-nd.  Fou 
Moral.  Epileptique.  Criminel-fou.  Criminel d'Occasion.  Crimi- 
nel par  Passion.  Etude  Anthropologiqueet  Psychiatrique,"  Bib- 
liotheque  de  Philosophic  Contemporaine,  2^me  ^dit.  Fran^aise  sur 
la  5^me  ^dit.  Italicnne,  2  vols.,  1895.     Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

[280] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Sergi,  and  Virgilio,  but  which  could  not  be  admit- 
ted with  certainty  as  long  as  the  boundaries  were 
so  badly  defined  and  lacked  a  true  scientific  de- 
scription." 

At  the  same  time  he  admits  that "  the  morally  in- 
sane have  nothing  whatever  in  common  with  the 
truly  insane.  They  are  not,  so  to  speak,  actually 
diseased — they  are  a  sort  of  moral  cretrnT  In  ad- 
dition, while  making  ancestral  heredity  (atavistic 
characteristics)  play  the  chief  and  most  important 
role,  he  also  admits  acquired  characteristics  and 
characteristics  which  are  pathological,  "  for  exam- 
ple, facial  asymmetry  which  does  not  exist  among 
the  savages,  unilateral  paresis,  strabismus,  dissimi- 
larity in  the  ears,  dyschromatopsia,  unilateral 
paresis,  irresistible  impulsions,  the  urgent  neces- 
sity of  doing  harm  for  harm's  sake,  etc.,  and  that 
sinister  gaiety  which  is  noticeable  in  the  slang  of 
criminals,  and  which,  alternating  with  a  certain 
tendency  toward  religiousness,  is  often  found 
among  the  epileptic.  Add  to  these  the  meningi- 
tides,  the  softenings  of  the  brain,  which  certainly 
do  not  spring  from  atavism,"  and  he  ends  up  "  by 
associating  the  morally  insane  and  the  criminal- 
born  with  a  branch  of  the  epileptoids." 

He  successively  studies:  i.  The  embryology  of 
crime  (crime  and  the  lower  organisms :   plants  and 

animals — crime  and  prostitution  among  the  sav- 

[281] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

ages — moral  insanity  and  crime  in  children);  2. 
Pathological  anatomy  and  anthropometry  of  crime 
(examinaton  of  383  skulls  of  criminals — anomalies 
of  the  skeleton,  heart,  liver,  etc. — anthropometry 
and  physiognomy  of  5,907  criminals);  3.  The  biol- 
ogy and  psychology  of  the  criminal-born  (tattoo- 
ing among  criminals — phenomena  of  molecular 
changes:  temperature,  pulse,  urine,  etc.;  general 
sensibility,  algometry,  etc. — affective  sensibility 
— suicide  among  criminals — sentiments  and  pas- 
sions among  criminals — direct  or  indirect  repeti- 
tion of  offense;  morality  of  criminals — religion  of 
criminals — intelligence  and  instruction  of  crimi- 
nals— slang — hieroglyphs  and  writings  of  crimi- 
nals, literature  of  criminals — art  and  industry 
among  criminals) ;  4.  The  moral  and  epileptic  iiv- 
sane  (the  moral  insane  —  epileptic — irresistible 
force — synthesis);  5.  Criminals  by  passion  (sui- 
cides of  passionate  and  unbalanced  people — politi- 
cal criminals  of  passion) ;  6.  The  crimi^ial  insane 
(statistics,  biology — psychology;  analogies  of  crim- 
inal movements  and  behavior  among  the  criminal- 
insane  and  criminal-born — psychology ;  differences 
according  to  the  different  kinds  of  mental  diseases 
—  alcoholic  criminal  —  hysterical  criminal  —  mat- 
toide  criminels — synthesis);  7.  The  criminal  of 
opportunity  (opinions  of  authors;  popular  prov- 
erbs;   official  statistics;    criticism — pseudocrimi- 

[282] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

nals;  criminaloides ;  their  physical  and  psychic 
characteristics,  criminals  of  habit — associations  of 
malefactors — latent  criminals — epileptoi'des). 

Lombroso  admits  that  the  "proportion  of  the 
criminal-born  is  about  40  per  cent."  of  the  whole 
number  of  criminals,  and  he  concludes,  on  the 
point  which  here  interests  us  the  most,  that  the 
analogy  between  the  morally  insane,  the  criminal- 
born,  and  the  epileptic  will  settle  once  for  all  a  dif- 
ference of  opinion  which  until  now  might  be  said 
to  be  endless  between  moralists,  jurists,  and  psy- 
chiatrists, and  which  sometimes  makes  itself  man- 
ifest among  the  different  psychiatric  schools. 
The  situation  was  all  the  more  delicate  because, 
by  some  remarkable  chance,  everybody  happened 
to  be  in  the  right.  In  short,  on  one  side  they  ob- 
jected, with  good  reason,  that  the  characteristic 
traits  attributed  to  the  morally  insane  belonged  by 
rights  to  the  criminal  semi-insane;  on  the  other 
hand,  they  were  not  wrong  to  maintain  that  the 
various  characteristics  of  the  criminal-born  were 
reproduced  with  the  greatest  exactness  in  many 
cases  of  moral  insanity.  We  are  able  thus  to  un- 
derstand why  very  eminent  savants  were  not  able 
to  agree  upon  the  diagnosis  of  a  criminal,  and  why 
they  have  declared  individuals  guilty  who  were 
unquestionably  insane,  or  at  least  unbalanced,  like 
Guiteau.  Menesclou,  Verzeni,  Prunier,  Agnoletti, 

[283] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Lawson,  Militello,  Garayo,  and  Passanante.  One 
understands  why  Cacopardo,  examining  the  cases 
attributed  to  moral  insanity  by  Pinel,  has  main- 
tained that  they  should  be  considered  guilty ;  and 
also  that  nearly  all  the  morally  insane  of  Bigot  are 
true  criminals.  According  to  Krafft-Ebing,  the 
penitentiaries  are  filled  with  the  morally  insane, 
this  is  because  he  has  looked  for  the  essence  of 
insanity  in  disorder  of  the  intelligence,  with  the 
result  that,  in  the  eyes  of  physicians  with  but  little 
experience,  the  majority  of  the  morally  insane  are 
considered  as  ordinary  culprits.  In  reality,  both 
sides  are  right,  since  the  two  things  have  been 
united  under  the  same  head. 

2.  Criticism  of  Lombrosos  Ideas, — The  works  of 
Lombroso  have  given  rise  to  a  great  number  of 
studies,  and  on  this  fact  rests  the  glory  of  this 
Italian  scholar,  whatever  may  be  the  definite  con- 
clusions concerning  his  work.  He  has  forcefully 
and  fortunately  called  attention  to  this  very  grave 
question,  which  had  been  sadly  neglected  before 
his  time,  namely,  the  relations  of  criminality  to 
semi-insanity. 

For  we  must  recognize  and  proclaim  the  fact 
that  this  is  the  particular  question  that  he  has 
analyzed  and  studied.  Before  him  and  from  all 
time  the  criminally  insane  man  was  separated  from 
other  criminals.    They  declared  him  irresponsible 

[284] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

and  treated  him  in  an  asylum  instead  of  punishing 
him  in  a  prison.  But  what  they  did  not  know 
enough  to  recognize,  or  what  they  did  not  dare  to 
proclaim,  was  the  disease  of  the  criminal  who 
either  was  not  insane  or  who  did  not  appear  to  be 
so,  who  was,  on  the  contrary,  lucid,  leading  a  life 
like  everybody  else,  or  almost  so,  up  to  the  day  of 
the  crime,  the  disease  of  ^^  criminal  semi-insane 
ma7i. 

The  objections  (and  they  are  many)  which  have 
been  formulated  against  Lombroso's  work  are  di- 
rected against  the  exaggerations  of  his  doctrine, 
and  the  too  broad  generalization  of  his  ideas,  but 
they  in  no  wise  diminish  the  great  interest  which 
has  been  awakened,  since  his  writings,  in  this  im- 
portant question  of  the  relations  between  criminal- 
ity and  semi-insanity. 

The  thing  that  is  false  in  Lombroso's  work  is 
the  narrow  basis  of  his  criminal  determinism. 
Altho  I  am  a  spiritualist,  I  do  not  reproach  the 
Italian  master  for  his  determinism.  You  will  see 
why  further  on,  when  I  shall  define  medical  re- 
sponsibility. But  I  do  reproach  him  for  having 
made  ancestral  heredity  play  an  exclusive  role,  or 
at  least  a  very  exaggerated  one,  in  the  production 
of  this  criminal  determinism.  There  are  notably 
two  important  elements  of  which  he  does  not  take 
sufficient  account,  especially  in  his  earlier  works : 

[285] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

morality  and  environment.  Moral  ideas,  whether 
innate  (hereditary)  or  acquired,  education,  instruc- 
tion, example,  have  a  very  decided  influence 
on  the  development  of  the  criminal,  which  it 
would  be  childish  to  deny. 

Lombroso  has  therefore  exaggerated  the  impor- 
tance of  the  criminal-born,  and  chiefly  his  physical 
stigmata.  This  is  what  runs  through  all  his  later 
works. 

It  is  in  this  sense,  and  with  these  reservations 
in  mind,  that  we  must  accept  the  severe  condem- 
nations of  Maurice  de  Fleury^  when  he  said: 
"  The  anatomical  type  of  Lombroso's  criminal- 
born  is  to-day  nothing  but  the  dream  of  a  well- 
meaning  but  curiously  disordered,  chaotic,  and 
blundering  brain.  All  the  logic  of  a  Garofalo,  all 
the  subtlety  and  vigor  and  cunning  of  an  Enrico 
Ferri,  can  come  to  nothing,  starting  from  this 
basis,  but  perishable  systematizations.  After  only 
a  few  years  we  find  their  structures  crumbling  here 
and  there."  Tarde  has  endeavored  to  show  how 
many  inconsistencies  there  have  been  in  the  at- 
tempt to  associate  crime  with  such  a  nervous  state 
or  such  another  pathological  condition.  We  have 
seen   Lombroso   turn   about,   first  counting    the 

'Maurice  de  Fleury:  "  L'Ame  du  Criminel,"  Biblioth&que  de 
Philosophic  Contemporaine,  1898,  pp.  xi.,  91,  115.  Paris,  F. 
Alcan. 

[286] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

criminal  as  atavistic,  then  as  an  epileptic  or  a 
hysterical,  a  savage,  or  a  madman.  Benedict  has 
likened  them  to  the  neurasthenics,  the  vagabonds, 
the  lazy,  and  the  pilferers  whose  chief  characteris- 
tic is  irritable  weakness.  Magnan  and  Fere  hold 
the  wicked  and  perverse  man  to  be  a  degenerate. 
Laurent  has  discovered  a  great  number  of  pris- 
oners with  marks  of  physical  degeneracy.  I  hold 
that  in  each  of  these  doctrines,  which  individually 
are  too  exclusive,  there  is  a  greater  or  less  degree  of 
truth.  Of  criminal  anthropology,  which  was  found- 
ed by  the  school  of  Turin,  and  the  theory  of  the  ana- 
tomic type  there  is  not  much  that  will  last.  It  is 
true  that  more  than  one  malefactor  shows  to  any 
one  who  carefully  examines  him  some  defects  in 
the  formation  of  his  skull  and  face ;  but  one  can 
see  only  the  ordinary  physical  stigmata  of  degen- 
eracy, which,  as  every  one  knows,  may  or  may  not 
accompany  mental  stigmata,  intellectual  anomaly, 
or  perverse  tendencies.  They  are  trifling  lesions, 
purely  specific  in  character.  And  we  may  under- 
stand, moreover,  that  any  partial  theory,  altho  it 
nearly  always  contains  a  certain  amount  of  truth,  is 
not  broad  enough  to  include  the  genesis  of  crime. 
We  can  not  say  that  crime  springs  from  atavism, 
or  from  moral  insanity,  or  epilepsy,  or  hysteria,  or 
neurasthenia,  or  a  bad  education,  or  even  from  an 
original  blemish;  we  can  only  say  that  each  one  of 

[287] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

these  causes  plays  its  role  in  turn,  and  that  often 
several  of  them  may  be  combined/ 

All  this  is  perfectly  true.  We  must  leave  out 
of  our  reckoning  the  over-exaggerated  idea  in 
Lombroso's  works  of  the  great  frequency  of  the 
criminal-born  and  of  the  importance  of  physical 
stigmata ;  but  we  must  retain  the  important  fact 
of  the  very  frequent  relations  which  exist  between 
criminality  and  semi-insanity. 

3.  Semi-msa7iity  and  Criminality. — It  is  a  fact 
that  the  semi-insane  very  frequently  commit 
crimes ;  this  is  the  obvious  conclusion  of  this  para- 
graph and  one  on  which  it  hardly  seems  necessary 
to  insist,  as  it  is  so  evident  and  at  the  present  time 
is  admitted  by  all  physicians. 

It  will  only  be  necessary  to  turn  to  my  third 
chapter  to  see  that  the  semi-insane  often  commit 
thefts,  murder,  set  buildings  on  fire,  and  commit 
outrages.  It  is  in  this  group  particularly  that 
all  the  perverts  belong  of  which  I  have  already 
spoken  (page  167)  in  connection  with  the  recent 
work  of  Marandon  de  Montyel. 

The  characteristic  thing  about  these  crimes  is 
that  they  are  committed  by  people  who  had  been 
considered,  up  to  the  time  of  the  committal  of  the 

'  See  also  concerning  Lombroso's  ideas  and  the  criticism  of 
them,  Morache:  "La  Responsabilitd :  Etude  de  Sociobiologie 
etM^d.  Ldg.,"  1906,  pp.  34  and  6i.     Paris,  F.  Alcan. 

[288] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE   SEMI-INSANE 

deed,  at  least  by  the  public  at  large,  as  perfectly 
well  and  normal.  They  are  not  of  the  class  who 
were  previously  insane  and  have  become  criminal. 
To  all  appearances  they  are  perfectly  responsible. 
Then  a  medical  examination  shows  that  these 
criminals  are  not  like  other  people,  but  that  they 
have  some  psychic  defects.  Thus  the  criminal 
semi-insane  are  fundamentally  and  wholly  distinct 
from  the  criminal-insane  and  the  criminals  who 
are  normal. 

A  good  example,  which  is  at  the  same  time  an 
excellent  demonstration,  of  these  semi-insane  crimi- 
nals is  furnished  to  us  by  the  female  poisoners 
whom  Rene  Charpentier^  has  studied  with  much 
care. 

The  author  passes  in  review  and  analyzes  all  the 
celebrated  poisoners  from  those  of  the  days  of 
fable  and  antiquity  (Hecate,  Circe,  Medea,  Semi- 
ramis,  Parysatis,  and  Cleopatra)  down  to  Mme. 
Lafarge,  Marie  Jeanneret,  Rachel  Galtie,  the  poi- 
soner of  Saint-Clar  and  Mme.  Massot,  and,  in  pass- 
ing, Livia,  Lucusta,  Agrippina,  Lucrezia  Borgia, 
Catherine  de  Medicis,  Spara  and  Toffana,  the 
Marquise  de  Brinvilliers,  Marie  Bosse,  la  Voisin, 
la  Vigoureux,  la  Pilaster,  etc. 

'Rend  Charpentier:  "  Ddgdndrescence  Mentale  et  Hystdrie. 
Les  Empoisonneuses.  fitude  Psychologique  Mddicoldgale," 
Th^se  de  Paris,  1906,  No.  222. 

19  [ 289  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

He  makes  a  clinical  and  medico-legal  study  of 
all  these  criminals  and  concludes  that  "  criminal 
poisoning  is  nearly  always  committed  by  women." 
The  historical  and  medico-legal  study  of  female 
poisoners  shows  that  a  certain  number  of  these 
criminals  are  hysterical  degenerates  and  that  there 
exists  a  manifest  relation  between  the  mentality  of 
these  unbalanced  people  and  the  psychology  of  the 
crime  of  poisoning.  Poison  is  the  weapon  chosen 
by  the  hysterical  person  who  has  a  desire  to  kill. 
Hysterical  homicides  are  always  degenerates. 
Outside  of  the  neuropathic  symptoms  which  are 
usually  grouped  under  the  name  of  hysteria,  one 
notices,  in  fact,  among  the  criminals  the  presence 
of  psychic  facts  independent  of  hysteria  and  bear- 
ing chiefly  upon  the  affective  and  moral  sphere. 
The  mental  examination  of  a  poisoner  is  ad- 
visable in  the  majority  of  cases  as  a  means  of  in- 
struction. 

I  feel  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  spend  time  in 
pointing  out  (which  is  the  object  of  this  first  sec- 
tion), namely,  the  harmfubiess  of  the  semi-insane. 
Altho  some  of  them  have  great  social  value  and 
render  services  to  society,  others  are  prejudicial, 
committing  misdemeanors  or  crimes  and  bringing 
direct  harm  to  the  rest.  Therefore,  a  double  duty 
devolves  upon  society;  first,  of  treating,  nursing, 
if  possible  curing,  and  at  least  lightening  the  lot  of 

[290] 


SOCIETY   AND   THE   SEMI-INSANE 

these  poor  unfortunate  sick  people ;  and  then  of 
protecting  oneself  against  their  misdeeds  while 
helping  and  treating  them.  This  then  is  the  ob- 
ject of  the  two  following  sections:  II.  Treat- 
ment of  the  semi-insane ;  III.  The  semi-insane  in 
relation  to  the  law. 

II.  TREATMENT   AND    PROPHYLAXIS 
OF  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

I.  Treatment 

The  curative  treatment  of  the  semi-insane  is  a 
purely  medical  question  which  I  have  attempted 
to  discuss  elsewhere  ^  and  which  will  not  be  taken 
up  here.  I  need  say  only  a  word  concerning  the 
duties  of  society  in  assuring  this  treatment  to  the 
semi-insane  when  they  are  poor. 

The  best  treatment  for  the  semi-insane  is  isola- 
tion and  psychic  treatment  in  a  special  establish- 
ment under  the  direction  of  an  experienced  phy- 
sician. For  the  rich  citizen  the  task  is  easy ;  there 
are  many  establishments  in  which  one  can  receive 
treatment.  It  is,  however,  very  difficult  to  obtain 
treatment  for  these  patients  with  these  same  psy- 
choneuroses  when  they  are  poor. 

We  meet  insurmountable  difificulties  every  day 

' "  Traitement  des  Maladies  du  Systfeme  Nerveux,"  Encyclop^die 
Scientifique,  1906. 

[291  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

when  we  wish  to  treat  the  epileptic  who  is  not  in- 
sane, or  a  case  of  hysteria  major,  a  dipsomaniac,  an 
eccentric,  or  any  seriously  abnormal  person.  It 
is  impossible  to  care  for  them  in  their  families ;  we, 
moreover,  prescribe  that  they  shall  be  taken  from 
the  family  and  social  circle.  But  when  we  try  to 
have  the  prescription  carried  out,  we  find  that  the 
usual  hospital  service  is  not  available ;  *  asylums 
would  be  harmful  to  them.  What  then?  We 
need  special  services  m  the  hospitals?  This  neces- 
sity is  imperative ;  and  no  matter  what  may  be  the 
financial  cost  which  such  an  innovation  would  en- 
tail, I  do  not  hesitate  to  insist  that  it  is  urgent. 

2.  Prophylaxis' 

I.  Possibility  of  Individual,  Family,  and  Social 
Prophylaxis  for  the  Semi-insane 

The  causes  of  semi-insanity  are  so  numerous, 
and  they  threaten  to  invade  society  so  seriously, 
and  are  so  difficult  to  cure  when  once  the  disease 
has  developed,  that  the  chief  duty  of  society  is  to 

'  Dejerine  has  opened  in  the  Salpetri^re  an  isolation  ward  for 
psychotherapy  which  may  be  considered  as  a  model.  See  Camus 
and  Pagniez:  "Isolation  and  Psychotherapy.  Treatment  of 
Hysteria  and  of  Neurasthenia."     Paris,  1904. 

^It  goes  without  saying  that  this  is  distinct  from  the  special 
asylums  for  criminal  demifous,  of  which  I  shall  speak  later. 

'See  "The  Organization  of  Social  Defense  against  Nervous 
Dieases,"  La  Revue  des  Id^es,  March  15,  1906. 

[292] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

organize  a  defense  against  such  nervous  diseases, 
and,  before  and  above  all,  to  establish  prophylaxis — 
a  prophylaxis  which  will  start  out  with  an  exact 
knowledge  of  the  numerous  causes  which  may 
develop  these  nervous  maladies,  and  methods  of 
pointing  out  and  disseminating  a  knowledge  of 
how  to  prevent  the  greatest  possible  number  of 
such  psychopathies. 

Such  an  enterprise  of  social  preservation  agamst 
the  diseases  of  the  nervous  system  is  not  impossi- 
ble. It  may  be  realized,  because  any  one  of  the 
causes  of  these  diseases,  no  matter  how  powerful 
and  redoubtable  it  may  seem,  is  neither  absolute 
nor  inevitable. 

Heredity  itself,  which  plays  a  certain  role  and 
which  has  for  so  long  and  so  universally  been 
recognized  in  this  etiology,  which  is  the  "  corner- 
stone of  the  edifice  "  (Paul  Raymond  0, "  the  great 
force  which  governs  the  world "  (Duclaux),  and 
"  the  cause  of  causes  "  (Trelat) — heredity,  which  is 
then  the  most  demonstrable  example,  is  not  itself 
certain  and  constant  in  its  results.  "  The  parti- 
zans  who  are  most  convinced  of  morbid  heredity 
recognize  that  the  transmission  of  pathological 
characteristics  is  not  fatal "  (Fere).  The  son  of  an 
epileptic  or  of  an  insane  man  may  escape  the  law 
of  heredity,  which  is  not  inexorable,  and  he  may 

'  Paul  Raymond  :  "  L'H^rddit^  Morbide,"  1905. 
[293] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

escape,  thanks  to  measures  on  which  the  physician 
should  be  able  to  take  action, — the  intermarriage 
of  families,  education,  and  personal  hygiene. 
Semi-insanity  is  usually  a  result,  requiring  for  its 
development  the  working  together  and  mingling 
of  several  causes ;  that  is  to  say,  no  one  of  the  usual 
psychopathic  causes  taken  by  itself,  whether  it 
comes  from  ancestors,  or  from  environment,  or 
from  the  subject  himself,  is  sufficient  to  give  rise 
to  these  diseases.  Thus  heredity  more  often  needs 
a  nervous  contagion  or  a  bad  moral  or  physical 
hygiene,  or  an  infection,  or  intoxication,  in  order 
to  bring  about  the  disease. 

Furthermore,  these  various  causes,  whose  con- 
currence is  necessary,  do  not  all  act  at  the  same 
time.  Thus,  heredity  comes  long  before  all  the 
others.  The  physician  can,  therefore,  in  each 
given  subject,  know,  before  the  development  of  the 
disease,  the  causes  which  have  acted  or  which  are 
still  acting  upon  a  certain  subject  to  prepare  the 
soil.  He  knows  the  individual  whom  he  ought 
particularly  to  watch  over,  he  knows  those  whom 
he  must  try  to  protect,  and  from  what  he  must 
protect  them ;  he  ought,  therefore,  to  be  able  to 
adapt  and  gage  each  in  a  special  way  and  with 
special  energy  adapted  to  each  particular  case. 
The  direction  of  the  physician  in  this  prophylactic 
struggle  ought  to  bear  chiefly  upon  two  periods  of 

[294] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

social  life — marriage  and  the  education  of  the  child 
and  the  citizen. 

2.  Medical  Stipervisioii  of  Marriage  {Foundation 
of  the  Family) 

"  Instead  of  your  being  satisfied,"  says  Trelat, 
"  with  counting  the  shekels,  take  pains  to  examine 
into  the  constitution,  the  health,  the  intelligence, 
and  the  moral  status  of  the  family  with  which  you 
are  thinking  of  forming  an  alliance.  What  will 
you  do  with  this  dowry,  which  is  mere  matter,  if 
along  with  this  you  take  for  your  companion  an 
unbalanced,  unsocial,  destructive  mind,  which  will 
bring  disorder  into  your  life,  turn  your  existence 
into  strife,  and  make  it  impossible  to  have  peace 
or  happiness  in  the  home?  In  order  to  make 
marriage  possible,  and  make  it  prosper,  do  not 
mingle  disease  with  health ;  seek  first  of  all,  not  a 
rich  or  titled  house,  but  a  pure  race  and  good  phys- 
ical and  moral  health." 

And  elsewhere  he  adds:  "Lucid  madmen  are 
found  in  tainted  families  whom  one  would  know 
enough  to  keep  away  from  if  one  could  see  more 
clearly,  and  could  get  away  from  this  fixt  idea 
which  still  pervades  all  ideas  of  marriage,  when 
one  can  understand  that  money,  and  a  great  deal 
of  money,  without  personal  qualities  and  reason,  is 
the  worst  of  all  poverty.  .  .  .  While  waiting  for 

[295] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

this,  and  without  having  need  of  any  more  light 
than  that  which  exists  for  us  at  present,  we  should 
ask  the  legislature  firmly  and  irrevocably  to  inter- 
dict marriage  with  the  unbalanced  (incapables). 
Under  the  head  of  incapables  we  place  the  imbe- 
ciles and  epileptics,  who  ought  to  live  under  cus- 
todial care.  .  .  .  It  is  wrong  to  permit  the  feeble- 
minded rights  which  they  can  not  use,  and  duties 
which  they  can  not  perform.  .  .  .  The  same  cus- 
toms, the  same  treatment,  and  the  same  liberty  for 
all,  for  the  diseased  as  well  as  for  the  healthy,  is  an 
injustice.  It  is  necessary,  for  the  common  good, 
that  society  should  protect  itself,  and  should  be 
protected.  Liberty  for  the  incapable  is  danger  for 
every  one.  It  may  be  a  homicidal  liberty.  .  .  . 
Tyranny,  which  is  oppression  of  the  strong,  is 
really  the  oppression  of  those  who  are  in  health." 
For  reasons  indicated  elsewhere  ^  I  believe  that 
the  legislature  can  not  intervene  in  this  question, 
and  I  advise  that  two  families  should  invite  a  con- 
ference of  their  two  physicians,  binding  them  to 
professional  secrecy,  promising  to  accept  and  carry 
out  their  dictum  without  demanding  and  without 
knowing  the  motives  of  their  judgment.  The 
families  would  thus  be  in  ignorance  of  the  defect 

'Should  marriage  be  regulated?  Inquiry  apropos  of  a  medical 
novel,  "  La  Graine,"  by  Andrd  Couvreur,  Chronique  Mddicale, 
1903,  p.  463. 

[296] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

which  would  hinder  this  marriage,  for  it  is  always 
a  question  of  a  particular  case.  On  account  of  the 
dangers  of  converging  bilateral  heredity  a  young 
man  and  a  young  woman  might  find  their  mar- 
riage forbidden,  but  each  of  the  two  might  marry 
another  person  whose  heredity,  introducing  an- 
other strain,  would  diminish  the  risks  instead  of 
aggravating  them.  It  goes  without  saying  that 
I  take  for  granted  the  honesty  of  the  two  families 
and  also  of  the  two  physicians,  without  which 
nothing  could  be  done.*  There  has  been  a  series 
of  objections  raised  to  this  method  of  procedure. 
My  distinguished  confrere.  Dr.  Mignon  of  Ro- 
morantin,  would  not  think  of  a  sentence  or  a 
judgment  without  personal  representation  (as  in  a 
council  of  war).  He  would  admit  only  councils 
which  he  would  sometimes  admit  to  be  absolute 
(which  would  satisfy  me,  since  I  do  not  want  legal 
obligations),  and  he  adds,  "  when  the  day  comes 
when  people  will  marry  only  for  love,  nature  and 
true  and  pure  love  would  demand  that  the  young 
people  should  come  themselves  to  ask  advice  of 
their  physician  in  such  a  serious  affair,  and  these 
counsels  would  be  followed  by  them  unless  the 
man  was  nothing  but  a  brute,  in  which  case  he 
should  be  abandoned."     God  help  you,  my  dear 

'See  the  interesting  work,  "  Science  and  Marriage,"  H.  Cazalis 
(Jean  Labor). 

[297] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

brother,  nobody  would  make  more  prayers  than 
I  for  the  realization  of  this  golden  age  of  ideal 
betrothals. 

"Furthermore,"  adds  the  same  confrere^  "do 
you  not  think  that  the  influence  of  a  strong,  sensi- 
tive, loving  soul  may  overcome  many  personal 
moral  defects  and,  better  still,  hereditary  and  fam- 
ily defects?  What  sensible,  loving  woman  would 
not  be  able  to  make  a  sober  man  out  of  a  drunk- 
ard? What  man,  what  true  man,  would  not  make 
a  true  woman  out  of  the  little  giddy,  pallid  board- 
ing-school girl,  who  seems  to  have  no  other  idea 
in  mind  than  to  be  a  well-dressed  doll,  if  only  she 
is  good  and  intelligent?  "  Nothing  is  more  true. 
Nevertheless,  we  ought  to  beware  of  the  marriage- 
remedy  theory.  We  have  no  right  to  sacrifice  a 
healthy  young  man  or  young  woman,  under  the 
pretext  that  he  or  she  may  cure  semi-insane  peo- 
ple by  marrying  them. 

I  recently  received  a  long  visit  from  an  infatu- 
ated young  man,  who  two  years  ago  had  married 
a  charming  woman,  who,  however,  was  tainted 
with  the  frightful  semi-insane  idea  that  she  must 
touch  everything  she  saw,  as  well  as  being  abnor- 
mally suspicious.  Her  family  had  criminally 
married  her,  thinking  that  marriage  would  cure 
her,  and  the  situation  had  become  as  distressing 
as  it  was  insoluble. 

[298] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

But  when  it  comes  to  asking  a  physician's  ad- 
vice concerning  semi-insanity  in  marriage,  the 
question  is  exceedingly  difficult  and  delicate  to 
answer,  because  semi-insanity  is  not  like  true  in- 
sanity— an  unquestioned  disease  that  must  inevita- 
bly and  always  interdict  marriage.  It  is  a  ques- 
tion of  the  individual  case  which  the  physician 
must  solve,  basing  his  answer  on  the  following  ele- 
ments: the  presence  of  certain  symptoms,  such  as 
helplessness,  intensity,  and  duration  of  the  disease, 
the  treatment  that  it  has  already  resisted,  its  hered- 
itary antecedents,  and  the  health  and  heredity  of 
the  other  interested  party. 

After  looking  at  each  particular  case  from  these 
different  points  of  view,  the  physician  ought  to  be 
able  to  render  a  decision  in  one  of  the  following 
ways:  He  may  simply  authorize  the  marriage  or 
absolutely  interdict  it,  without  further  discussion, 
or  he  may  counsel  abstinence  (giving  grounds  for 
his  reasons),  or  he  may  permit  it  while  showing  the 
possible  dangers  of  such  a  marriage,  and  insisting 
for  the  sake  of  the  future  household  that  certain 
precautions  should  be  taken,  chiefly  those  pertain- 
ing to  special  medical  oversight.* 


*  I  do  not  approve  of  permission  to  marry,  with  interdiction  of 
maternity.  See  the  Referendum  on  anticonceptinnal  prophylnxis, 
apropos  of  a  book  of   Klotz  Forest,  Chronique  M^dicale,  1905,  p. 

lOI. 

[399] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

3.  Medical  Supervision  of  the  Bringing  Up  of  the 
Child  and  the  Making  of  a  Citizen  {Physical^ 
Intellectual,  and  Moral  Education). 

Whether  the  marriage  of  parents  with  doubtful 
heredity  has  been  medically  supervised  or  not,  the 
child  born  into  the  world  is  not  diseased,  but  it  has 
a  strong  neuropathic  heredity  or  at  least  a  heredi- 
ty that  will  attract  attention.  Consequently  his 
education  should  not  be  like  that  of  other  children. 
The  physician  should  be  consulted  from  the  men- 
tal and  moral  as  well  as  from  the  physical  point 
of  view. 

a.  For  the  physical  growth,  the  four  following 
periods  should  be  especially  watched:  the  first 
year,  the  first  to  the  seventh  year,  from  seven  to 
thirteen,  and  from  thirteen  to  eighteen. 

a.  The  first  year  is  the  nursing  period.  The 
nurse  plays  no  part  in  heredity.  A  mother  there- 
fore will  not  augment  any  hereditary  influence  by 
nursing  her  child.  Nevertheless  I  believe  that  it 
is  better  for  a  neurotic  (I  do  not  say  nervous) 
mother  not  to  nurse  her  child,  and  that  it  is  better 
not  to  choose  a  nervous  wet-nurse  for  an  infant 
with  such  a  predisposition.  This  is  because  nerv- 
ous troubles  influence  the  lactic  secretions.  Emo- 
tions, and  particularly  sad  emotions,  can  cause  the 
milk  supply  to  be  diminished  or  even  dry  up  en- 

[300] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

tirely  (for  a  time  at  least).  My  distinguished  col- 
league Puech  has  cited  the  cases  of  some  infants 
observed  by  Meslier,  who  manifested  great  agita- 
tion and  even  had  convulsions  after  having  been 
at  the  breast  of  a  nurse  who  had  been  through 
great  excitement  or  who  had  had  epileptic 
attacks.* 

yS.  From  one  year  to  seven,  a  child  with  a  pre- 
disposition to  diseases  of  the  nervous  system 
ought  to  be  particularly  watched  on  the  four  fol- 
lowing points:  weaning,  dentition,  intestinal 
worms,  convulsions.  I  do  not  say  that  infantile 
convulsions^  are  always  the  prelude  of  later  trouble, 
nor  do  I  ascribe  them  always  to  hysteria  of  child- 
hood, nor  forget  the  cases  of  uremic  convulsions 
that  appear  at  this  age;  yet  it  is  certain,  in  a  gen- 
eral way,  that  convulsions  denote  a  neuropathic 
condition  in  a  child  which  must  be  reckoned  with 
in  the  future,  and  which  the  physician  must  treat 
and  do  his  best  to  avert,  particularly  at  the  times 
which  are  most  favorable  for  their  development, 
viz.,  during  weaning  and  dentition,  or  during  an 
attack  of  intestinal  worms,  gastroenteritis,  and  at 
the  beginning  of  an  acute  disease  (an  eruptive  or 
any  other  fever). 

'See  also  the  thesi^  of  Pierre  Loyer:  "Moral  Emotions  in 
Nurses,  and  the  Effect  on  Their  Milk."     Paris,  1904. 

*0n  infantile  convulsions  see  the  thesis  of  Octave  Monod, 
Paris,  1904,  and  the  work  of  Moore,  The  Lancet,  1904. 

[301] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

y.  The  period  of  seven  to  thirteen  years  is  notice- 
ably the  age  for  chorea  and  tics,  and  then  the  ques- 
tion arises  concerning  the  amount  of  bodily  exer- 
cise and  sports  that  should  be  introduced  into  the 
education  of  children  predisposed  to  nervous  dis- 
ease.* Physical  overstrain  is  bad.  It  weakens  the 
body  instead  of  strengthening  it,  and  as  a  conse- 
quence it  facilitates  the  development  of  diseases  of 
the  nervous  system.  But  regular  exercise,  taken 
moderately  and  in  frequent  instalments,  an  enthu- 
siasm for  regular  walks,  which  are  gradually  in- 
creased, rational  gymnastics,  carefully  watched 
over  and  directed,  play  during  recreation  hours, 
active  play  such  as  kite-flying  and  tennis  are  excel- 
lent for  children  whom  one  may  suspect  of  a  tend- 
ency to  develop  nervous  diseases. 

8.  From  thirteen  to  eighteen  is  the  period  of 
puberty.  In  the  young  girl  it  is  the  period  when 
menstruation  begins.  It  is  the  age  when  hysteria 
and  bad  habits  develop. 

b.  With  reference  to  intellectual  and  moral  de- 
velopment the  physician  should  not  confine  him- 
self to  the  physical  side  alone.  He  should  work 
with  the  teacher,  the  priest,  or  the  pastor,  and  the 
father  and  the  mother. 

The  first  question  that  arises  is  that  of  overwork 

'See  Maurice  de  Fleury:   "The  Body  and  Soul  of  the  Child. 
Our  Children  at  School." 

[302] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

at  school.  Bergson  exclaimed,  "  The  future  Is  for 
those  who  can  overwork."  Charcot  and  Rabier 
would  scarcely  consent  to  this.  Overwork  is  a 
disease  which  only  the  predisposed  contract ;  over- 
straining is  a  question  of  individual  reaction.  A 
person  is  not  overworked  by  a  certain  given  task. 
That  depends  on  the  quantity  of  the  work  and  the 
intellectual  quality  of  the  individual  who  works, 
therefore  it  is  necessary  for  the  physician  to  decide 
in  the  case  of  each  particular  child  whether  or  not 
he  is  overworked  by  taking  into  account  his  hered- 
ity, his  temperament,  and  his  actual  physical  con- 
dition ;  in  other  words,  overstrain  is  not  a  ques- 
tion of  general  pedagogy,  but  one  of  individual 
medicine. 

The  general  programs  and  rules  will  often  be 
found  unsuitable  for  nervous  children,  and  then, 
especially  in  cases  in  which  there  is  a  strong  pre- 
disposition, the  physician  should  forbid  school  en- 
tirely and  prescribe  special  instruction,  which,  if  it 
is  intelligently  directed,  can  be  better  adapted  to 
the  particular  temperament  and  even  to  the  daily 
condition  of  the  child.  For  children  who  have  a 
strong  neuropathic  disposition  the  physician  should 
forbid  graded  schools  and  advise  rather  a  prepara- 
tion for  careers  in  which,  from  the  start,  brain 
work  is  interspersed  with  active  physical  work  in 
the  open  air  (agriculture).    Absolute  prohibition 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

of  all  brain-work  may  be  a  necessary  part  of  treat- 
ment for  certain  sick  children  (epileptics).  I  do 
not  think  that  it  is  ever  a  necessary  prophylactic 
measure  for  children  who  are  simply  threatened 
with  nervous  disorder. 

From  the  moral  point  of  view  it  is  always 
necessary  to  guard  such  predisposed  children 
from  the  tendency  to  selfishness  and  to  untruth- 
fulness. 

By  taking  such  care  of  the  moral  growth  the 
prophylaxis  of  nervous  diseases  may  truly  become 
2l  prophylaxis  of  crime. 

As  soon  as  the  secondary  studies  are  finished,  the 
problem  arises,  what  walk  in  life  shall  be  chosen  for 
young  persons  with  nervous  predispositions?  All 
such  ought  to  have  a  career,  a  profession ;  noth- 
ing is  more  prejudicial  and  more  dangerous'  than 
idleness. 

Speaking  in  a  general  way  there  is  no  profession 
which  would  especially  develop  diseases  of  the 
nervous  system,  or  which  would  hasten  their  out- 
break (I  am  not  speaking  of  intoxications  connected 
with  certain  professions).  Everything  depends  on 
the  particular  adaptation  of  each  profession  to 
each  individual.  We  might  add,  however,  that  in 
a  general  way  a  profession  with  an  outdoor  life, 
such  as  agriculture,  which  does  not  demand  too 

[304] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE   SEMI-INSANE 

intense  and  continuous  intellectual  effort,  and 
which  does  not  carry  with  it  preoccupying  re- 
sponsibilities, is  much  better  adapted  to  those  who 
are  nervously  predisposed. 

Marriage,  celibacy,  and  the  religious  life  only  do 
good  when  they  are  in  accordance  with  the  tastes 
and  the  vocations  of  the  individual,  only  do  harm 
when  they  are  enforced,  or  when  they  fail  to  real- 
ize a  hoped-for  ideal. ' 

Military  service,  as  a  rule,  is  rather  beneficial  to 
those  who  are  nervously  predisposed/  If  the  pre- 
disposition is  strong  and  the  neurotic  stigmata  are 
already  very  distinct,  the  army  surgeon  should  be 
notified  and  asked  to  keep  a  watch  on  the  recruit 
while  putting  him  in  a  position  to  understand  the 
situation. 

Political  life,  on  the  other  hand,  should  be  ad- 
vised against  and  forbidden  to  people  with  such 
predispositions. 

A  change  of  environment  and  temporary  with- 
drawal from  the  family  circle  are  often  advisable, 
especially  when  the  parents  are  themselves  nerv- 
ous, for  neurotic  people  are  deplorable  educators. 

'The  author  speaks  here  of  the  military  service  as  known  on  the 
Continent,  where  all  classes  are  required  to  serve  a  definite  num- 
ber of  years.     [Ed.] 


[3°S] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

4.  A  Few  General  Hygienic  Rules  for  those  with 
a  Predisposition  to  Nervous  Disorders 

All  prophylactic  measures  for  nervous  disorders 
must  be  based  upon  an  exact  knowledge  of  their 
causation,  which  may  be  hereditary  or  environ- 
mental or  due  to  the  individual. 

Direct  heredity  (father  or  mother  to  child),  ata- 
vistic heredity  (direct  or  skipping  one  or  more  gen- 
erations), ancestral  heredity  (collateral),  converging 
bilateral  heredity  (consanguinity)  may  give  rise  to 
similar  forms  of  nervous  disease  (epilepsy  giving 
rise  to  epilepsy)  or  to  a  dissimilar  form  ^  (epilepsy 
giving  rise  to  hysteria),  or  a  non-nervous  or  unlike 
form  of  disease  (tuberculosis,''  alcoholism,  immo- 
rality, arthritism,  or  diabetes). 

As  to  the  individual  himself,  he  of  necessity 
plays  a  very  important  etiological  role :  first,  as  to 
temperament  and  as  to  character;  second,  as  to 
sex,  the  sexual  life  and  its  excesses;  third,  to  edu- 
cation and  to  overwork;  fourth,  to  the  choice  of  a 
profession  and  the  kind  of  life ;  fifth,  to  the  moral 


'  This  includes  the  vices  and  tendencies  to  crime  on  one  side,  and 
intellectual  superiority  and  genius  on  the  other, 

'See  my  article  on  the  relations  of  hysteria  to  the  tuberculous 
and  scrofulous  diatheses,  Montpellier  Medical,  iS84,p.  220,  and 
Campana :"  Tuberculous  Heredity  and  Neuropathies,  Nervous 
Manifestations  in  the  Descendants  of  the  Tuberculous,"  Th^se  de 
Lyon,  1903,  p.  105. 

[306] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

life,  the  emotions  and  passions ;  sixth,  as  to  former 
diseases,  infections,  intoxications,  diatheses,  and 
various  diseases. 

This  being  the  case,  it  is  not  only  in  the  great 
events  of  life,  such  as  have  been  previously  studied, 
that  we  must  watch  over  the  predisposed,  namely, 
the  foundation  of  the  family  by  marriage,  their 
school  and  college  education  and  the  choice  of 
their  career,  but  it  is  over  every  event  during  their 
entire  life. 

The  physician  should  make  it  thoroughly  under- 
stood, and  should  often  repeat  the  fact  to  such  pre- 
disposed individuals,  that  they  can  not  live  as  other 
people  do ;  that  they  have  no  right  to  quote  the 
example  of  healthy  individuals  who  can  do  any- 
thing they  want  to  do  with  impunity.  The  pre- 
disposed have  need  of  special  hygienic  care  during 
their  whole  life.  Thus  the  nervous  would  do 
well  to  abstain  from  the  use  of  alcohol*  and  of 
tobacco. 

Their  genital  life  should  be  very  carefully  regu- 
lated. Not  only  the  first  menstrual  period,  but 
each  monthly  period,  each  pregnancy,  as  well  as 
the  menopause,  may  provoke  the  onset  of  a  neuro- 
sis. In  men  there  are  exaggerations  and  anomalies 
of  the  genital  life  which  must  be  regulated,  and  by 

'Alcohol,  says   Fdrd,  is  the  touchstone  of  the  cerebral  func- 
tions. 

[  307  1 


THE  SEMI-INSANE] 

anomalies  I  mean  not  only  excesses,  but  also  the 
agitations  and  moral  shocks  which  often  accom- 
pany the  genital  life  in  its  widest  sense. 

With  reference  to  a  professional  and  social  life 
the  predisposed  should  be  warned  of  the  dangers' 
that  they  run  if  they  enter  this  strenuous  life  of 
competition  which  is  apt  to  lead  to  neuroses  and 
even  serious  psychoses,  and  sometimes  even  to 
general  paresis.  Those  who  are  predisposed 
should  be  prevented  from  wearing  themselves  out 
in  that  feverish  agitation  which  seizes  everybody 
in  the  dizzy  whirl  of  the  present  day.  It  should 
be  noted  that  I  am  condemning  the  too  rapid  pace 
not  only  in  harmful  things  such  as  gambling  and 
sport,  but  also  in  commendable  pursuits.  In  any 
industry,  or  in  commerce,  or  even  in  scientific 
study  one  may  become  overstrained  by  attempting 
to  press  ahead  of  others  or  to  make  a  great  fortune 
or  to  be  spoken  of  in  the  papers,  or  to  bedizen 
oneself  with  decorations  before  forty.  If  these 
things  do  not  come  before  that  age  the  neurotic 
individual  believes  himself  to  be  persecuted.  He 
is  on  the  verge  of  semi-insanity,  if  not  worse. 


[308] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

III.  THE  SEMI-INSANE  AND  THE 
LAW.  SEMI-RESPONSIBILITY. 
LIMITED  OR  ATTENUATED  RE- 
SPONSIBILITY 

We  have  now  arrived  at  the  most  serious  and 
most  difficult  part  of  this  chapter  as  well  as  of  the 
whole  book.  Semi-insanity  having  been  estab- 
lished, we  will  assume  that  a  semi-insane  man  has 
committed  a  misdemeanor  or  a  crime.  He  is  no 
longer  harmful  to  society  in  theory  only — he  has 
become  a  dangerous  man  in  fact  and  in  deed. 
Society  still  owes  him  assistance  and  treatment 
because  he  is  still  sick ;  but  she  has  the  right  to 
go  further  than  that  and  to  defend  herself  against 
any  new  misdemeanors,  since  he  is  a  criminal.* 

How  should  society  combine  these  rights  toward 
the  semi-insane  ?  The  first  question  which  I  must 
attack  and  solve  is  that  of  semi-responsibility,  or 
of  limited  or  attenuated  responsibility. 

In  order  to  state  my  argument  as  methodically 
as  possible  I  will  first  take  up  what  must  be  un- 
derstood by  responsibility  in  the  medical  or  medico- 
legal sense ;  then  what  is  meant  by  attenuated  re- 

'  I  always  use  the  word  criminal  \n  the  sense  that  an  individual 
has  committed  a  crime  whether  responsible  or  irresponsible.  The 
semi-insane  man,  as  well  as  the  insane  man,  is  only  a  criminal,  in 
deed. 

[309] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

sponsibility.  Finally,  I  will  cite  several  exam- 
ples of  cases  of  semi-insanity  with  limited  respon- 
sibility. 

I.  Medical  Idea  of  Responsibility' 

I.  The  Medical  Idea  of  Responsibility  Can  Not  Be 
Based  on  the  Philosophic  Notion  of  Free-will 
or  of  Determinism 

When  the  physician  attempts  to  throw  light 
upon  the  true  and  complete  meaning  of  the  word 
"responsible"  or  "responsibility,"  he  naturally 
turns  first  of  all  to  the  philosophers.  Unfortu- 
nately he  finds  that  philosophers  occasionally  dis- 
agree as  decidedly  as  physicians,  and  he  trembles 
when  he  sees  the  blade  of  the  guillotine  held  sus- 
pended by  the  fragile  thread  of  a  philosophic 
system. 

It  is  easy  to  explain  the  differences  of  opinion 
between  philosophers  on  this  question  when  one 
remembers  that  the  idea  of  responsibility  is  inti- 
mately bound  up  with  the  idea  that  everybody 
acts  with  individual  liberty  or  free-will.  One  can, 
therefore,  foresee  the  most  varying  opinions  con- 
cerning responsibility,  since  no  one  can  agree  on 
the  subject  of  free-will. 

"  A  human  being  is  responsible,"  says  Goblot, 

'See  "The  Physiopathological  Problem  of  Responsibility," 
Journal  de  Psychologic  Normale  et  Pathologique,  1905,  No.  2. 

[310] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE   SEMI-INSANE 

in  his  "  Vocabulaire  Philosophique,"  "  when  he  can 
be  held  accountable  for  his  actions  and  when  he 
can  legally  be  arrested  for  a  wrong  act,"  and  he 
adds,  "responsibility  seems  to  presuppose  free- 
will. An  individual  whose  acts  are  imposed  upon 
him  may  be  considered  as  an  instrument  of  forces 
which  govern  him,  and  his  acts  can  no  more  be 
imputed  to  him  than  a  murder  could  be  imputed 
to  a  knife  or  to  a  vial  of  poison.  Responsibility 
necessarily  keeps  going  back  and  forth  from  one 
secondary  cause  to  another,  and  does  not  stop 
until  it  reaches  a  first  cause,  as,  for  an  example,  a 
free  act." 

Hence  the  idea  of  responsibility  depends  en- 
tirely on  the  idea  that  one  takes  of  liberty;  on  this 
last  point,  therefore,  the  contemporaneous  school 
would  lock  up  very  distinguished  men,  the  most 
distinguished  I  might  say,  who  deny  free-will  and 
whose  doctrines  lead  to  the  denial  of  liberty.  I 
have  cited  several  examples  of  such  in  my  second 
chapter  (page  82>). 

I  can  not  discuss  these  philosophic  doctrines 
here,  nor  can  I  discover  whether  all  contemporary 
philosophies,  starting  off  with  the  same  experi- 
mental ideas,  lead  with  unrelenting  logic  to  the 
same  conclusions.^     It  is  enough  to  admit  the  ex- 

'See  "The  Limits  of  Biology,"  3d  ed.,  1906,  p.  23.     F.  Alcan, 
Paris. 

[311I 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

istence  of  these  doctrines  in  the  current  philoso- 
phies of  to-day. 

In  seeking  for  some  philosophic  point  of  sup- 
port on  which  to  build  up  his  idea  of  responsibility 
the  expert  will  encounter  these  doctrines.  He  has 
the  right  to  adopt  them ;  in  fact,  I  believe  that 
most  physicians  look  at  things  from  this  stand- 
point, and  do  not  admit  individual  liberty  or  free- 
will.    For  them  determinism  is  everything. 

But  how  can  they  then  consent  to  confine  them- 
selves only  to  the  question  put  by  the  magistrate : 
Is  this  man  responsible,  or  not  responsible,  for  this 
act? 

2.  It  is  only  on  a  Physiopathological  Basis  that 
there  can  be  Built  up  an  Idea  of  Medical  Re- 
spo7tsibility  which  all  Physicians  Can  and 
Ought  to  Accept^  whatever  may  be  their  Philo- 
sophic or  Religious  Convictions  on  Free-will 
and  the  Soul 

Since  the  path  of  philosophy  leads  us  into  a 
blind  alley,  the  physician  who  is  anxious  to  get  a 
clear  idea  of  responsibility  ought  to  see  if  he  can 
not  arrive  by  some  other  path.  There  is  another 
way:  It  is  the  physiological  way,  or,  better,  the 
physiopathological  way.  The  physician,  while  still 
remaining  in  his  own  proper  domain,  may  succeed 
in  getting  a  medical  idea  of  responsibility  which  is 

[312] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

by  no  means  the  same  as  the  moral  idea  of  the 
philosophers;  one  which  rests  on  a  much  more 
scientific  foundation  and  which  is  not  subject  to 
the  same  fluctuations  and  discussions,  and  yet  one 
which  on  the  whole  will  be  quite  sufficient  for  him, 
as  a  physician,  to  fill  his  role  of  expert. 

To  whatever  philosophic  school  they  belong, 
medical  men  always  admit  that  the  nervous  sys- 
tem plays  a  most  indispensable  and  important  role 
in  the  accomplishment  of  any  act  or  in  the  con- 
duct of  life. 

The  expert  has  no  other  concern  than  with  this 
nervous  system,  this  apparatus,  which  is  as  neces- 
sary a  tool  for  the  spiritualist  as  for  the  material- 
ist. The  physician  is  competent  only  to  judge  of 
the  material  condition  of  this  tool.  He  can  decide 
only  one  thing — the  condition  of  health  or  of  dis- 
ease of  this  tool — this  nervous  system  and  the  in- 
fluence that  this  tool  may  have  on  the  criminal 
determination  which  the  individual  conceives  and 
executes. 

In  every  voluntary  and  deliberate  act  there  is  a 
judgment  in  which  the  individual  compares  and 
weighs  the  desire  which  he  has  to  do  a  given  thing 
and  the  duty  which  he  has  not  to  do  it.  Among 
these  motive  forces,  therefore,  there  is  the  idea  of 
duty  (whatever  its  origin  or  nature  may  be),  the 
idea  of  what  is  permitted  and  what  is  prohibited, 

[313] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

and  the  mission  of  the  expert  is  to  decide  if  the 
condition  of  the  subject's  nervous  system  has  per- 
mitted him  carefully  to  weigh  and  judge  these 
motor  forces  and  motives;  that  is  to  say,  whether 
the  condition  of  his  nervous  system  renders  him 
responsible  or  irresponsible. 

The  only  thing,  therefore,  which  the  physician 
has  to  judge  is  the  role  that  the  nervous  system 
plays  in  volition  and  in  the  act;  he  has  to  deal 
only  with  that  element  of  the  act  which  is  admitted 
by  everybody  in  the  various  philosophic  schools. 
He  has  no  concern  with  that  other  element  re- 
specting which  there  is  so  much  discussion  among 
the  various  philosophers,  namely,  the  element  of 
the  soul.  This  latter  does  not  concern  him. 
Therefore,  the  medical  man  can  and  ought  to  ana- 
lyze and  value  the  responsibility  of  an  individual 
in  exactly  the  same  manner  whether  he  be  a  spiri- 
tualist or  a  materialist. 

In  the  same  way  the  opinions  of  an  expert  on 
the  question  of  free-will  or  moral  responsibility  do 
not  matter  much.  For  an  individual  to  be  medic- 
ally responsible  to  society  for  an  act,  it  is  not  nec- 
essary for  him  to  have  a  sane  idea  of  right  in  itself, 
or  any  obligations  which  rest  upon  him,  or,  in  a 
word,  of  moral  law.  For  a  subject  to  be  medically 
responsible  before  society  for  an  act  it  is  necessary 
and  sufficient  for  him  to  have  a  sane  idea  of  what 

[314] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

is  permitted  or  forbidden  by  civil  law,  or  the  writ- 
ten law,  of  which  no  one  virtually  is  ignorant,  es- 
pecially along  the  broad  lines  which  forbid  the  ap- 
propriation of  another's  property  or  the  taking  of 
another's  life. 

A  spiritualist  and  a  materialist,  a  religious  or  an 
irreligious  man,  a  determinist  and  a  partizan  of 
free-will,  may  have  different  conceptions  of  moral 
duty  and  moral  obligation  in  the  light  of  con- 
science ;  but  they  can  not  look  at  social  duty  and 
social  obligation  to  the  law  from  different  view- 
points. 

If  to  medical  responsibility  thus  defined  some 
authors  would  wish  to  apply  Bayet's  objection  and 
say  that  even  from  this  point  of  view  man  is  no 
more  responsible  than  a  tree,  I  have  already  in- 
dicated (page  94)  what  reply  may  be  made  to  this 
argument.  Man  has  psychic  neurons,  which  a  tree 
has  not ;  the  question  of  medical  responsibility  or 
irresponsibility  going  back  to  a  question  of  the  in- 
tegrity or  disease  of  the  neuron  system  can  have 
relation  only  to  man,  and  not  to  a  tree. 

Therefore,  all  physicians,  whatever  may  be  their 
philosophic  or  religious  convictions,  ought  to  meet 
one  another  on  this  double  principle:  (i)  That 
they  have  only  to  decide  on  the  responsibility  of 
the  individual  before  society;  (2)  they  have  only 
to  decide  upon  the  integrity  or  the  non-integrity 

[315] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

of  the  nervous  centers  and  the  influence  of  the 
condition  of  the  nervous  system  on  the  material 
action  of  the  volitional  psychism — an  action  which 
no  philosophic  or  religious  school  can  deny. 

3.  Responsibility  and  Culpability .     The  Physi- 
cian attd  the  Magistrate 

It  will  be  seen  how  greatly  the  role  of  the  expert 
differs  from  that  of  the  judges,  whether  magis- 
trates or  jurors.  For  the  judges  the  problem  of 
responsibility  is  much  more  complex ;  it  is  put  to 
them  from  the  broadest  general  standpoint. 

Thus  the  judge  must  take  into  account  the  in- 
tention of  the  individual.  (This  is  an  element 
of  moral  responsibility.)  A  legitimate  defense, 
which,  for  example,  would  excuse  certain  wrong 
or  criminal  acts  from  the  standpoint  of  the  judge, 
must  not  be  taken  into  consideration  by  the  phy- 
sician. In  a  general  way,  the  circumstances  sur- 
rounding the  act,  which  are  extraneous  to  the 
individual,  and  which  are  most  important  in  ascer- 
taining conditions  and  in  coming  to  a  judgment, 
these  are  nothing  to  the  physician.  He  has  only 
to  read  in  the  circumstances  the  facts  that  will 
throw  light  on  the  individual  himself  and  on  the 
condition  of  his  nervous  system. 

The  medical  man  leaves  the  material  fact  alone 
and  seeks  by  a  physiopsychological  examination 

[316] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

of  his  subject  to  find  out  whether  the  individ- 
ual decided  to  perform  the  act  with  his  nervous 
system  in  good  condition,  that  is,  with  nervous 
centers  which  are  normally  functioning  or  are 
diseased. 

The  question  put  to  the  jury  respecting  the 
culpability  of  the  individual  is  wholly  different 
from  that  to  the  experts  concerning  his  responsi- 
bility. One  can  be  entirely  responsible  for  an  act 
for  which  one  is  not  culpable.  A  jury  may  acquit 
an  individual  whom  the  expert  has  declared  re- 
sponsible without  there  being  any  contradiction 
between  these  two  verdicts;  but  a  jury  ought  not 
to  be  able  to  condemn  an  individual  whom  medi- 
cal science  has  declared  to  be  irresponsible.  Phys- 
iological responsibility  is  a  necessary  element,  but 
not  in  itself  sufficient  to  prove  culpability. 

This  shows,  in  passing,  what  an  error  those  fall 
into  who  wish  to  depend  wholly  on  medical  ex- 
perts and  wish  to  replace  the  opinion  of  judges  by 
that  of  physicians.  I  mean  by  this  that  I  do  not 
dream,  as  Ferri  does,  of  seeing  the  ideal  or  hearing 
of  the  future  consisting  wholly  of  scientific  discus- 
sions on  the  symptoms  presented  by  the  delin- 
quent, or  the  circumstances  which  have  preceded, 
accompanied,  or  followed  the  deed,  and  on  their 
anthropological  significance.*      I  believe  that  the 

'Jean  Guippi :  "  La  Cours  d'Assise,"  1898,  p.  152. 
[317] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

only  method  of  preserving  to  the  experts  all  the 
authority  to  which  they  are  entitled  is  carefully  to 
observe  the  differences  between  the  powers  and 
the  points  of  view  of  the  judges  and  the  phy- 
sicians. 

In  concluding  I  would  say  \h2ii  physiological  or 
medical  respojisibility  (the  only  one  which  the  phy- 
sician can  and  ought  to  study  in  the  normal  and 
pathological  state)  is  independent  of  philosophic 
and  religious  doctrines  concerning  free-will  and 
the  spiritual  and  immortal  soul.  It  is  a  question 
of  the  function  of  psychic  neurons,  and  conse- 
quently the  role  of  the  expert  consists  only  in 
studying  and  determining  the  condition  and  the 
functioning  of  the  psychic  neurons.  This  places 
the  physician  beyond  all  danger  of  philosophic  in- 
vasion, and  leaves  him  distinctly  in  the  class  in 
which  he  is  competent. 

4.  The  medical  idea  of  responsibility  according 
to  contemporaneous  authors  is  not  only  not  in  con- 
tradiction to  recent  conceptions  of  responsibility, 
but  it  seems  to  me  it  enables  one  to  have  even  a 
better  conception  of  them.^ 

It  is  very  curious  to  study  the  evolution  of  this 
idea  in  recent  works.     The  Italian  school  of  Lom- 

'  See  Saleilles:  "L'Individualisation  de  la  Peine,"  Bibliotb^que 
G^ndrale  des  Sciences  Sociales,"  1S98,  and  Maurice  de  Fleury : 
"  L'Ame  du  Criminel,"  Biblioth^que  Philosophic  Contemporaine, 
1898. 

[318] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

broso  have  relinquished  the  idea  of  the  unity  of 
free-will  and  responsibility,  and  certain  of  these 
authors  have  resolutely  supprest  one  or  the  other. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  school  of  Tarde  and  of 
Saleilles  have  tried  to  save  the  idea  of  responsibil- 
ity without  resuscitating  free-will. 

a.  The  Italian  School:  Lomdroso,  Ferri^  Garofalo 

"  One  might  say  that  this  Italian  school,  whose 
three  most  celebrated  representatives  are  Lom- 
broso,  Ferri,  and  Garofalo,  had  arisen  first  of  all 
as  a  direct  reaction  against  the  idea  of  free-will  as 
understood  in  its  classic  interpretation.  The  old 
idea  was  that  crime  was  an  emanation  of  freedom. 
The  Italian  school  regards  crime  as  a  natural  prod- 
uct, as  the  result  of  purely  natural  factors  which 
hardly  leave  any  place  for  the  idea  of  individual 
liberty.  According  to  Lombroso,  these  factors 
are  almost  entirely  anthropological.  According  to 
Ferri,  they  are  more  specially  sociological.  But 
what  does  this  matter?  Hence  one  is  not  morally 
responsible  for  committing  a  crime  since  when 
it  was  conceived,  one's  will  was  not  free.  One 
is  only  socially  responsible  for  it  because  one 
owes  something  to  society  for  the  dangers  and 
damages  brought  about "  (Saleilles). 

According  to  these  Italian  authors,  says  Maurice 
de  Fleury, "  it  is  the  fatality  of  evil.     Consequently 

[3i9l 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

they  say  a  criminal  is  only  responsible  because  he 
is  dangerous."  He  quotes  Garofalo  as  follows: 
"  The  right  to  punish  is  simply  that  law  of  nature 
by  virtue  of  which  all  organisms,  and  in  particular 
the  social  organism,  reacts  against  anything  which 
disturbs  .the  condition  of  its  existence.  Up  to  this 
point  punishments  are  graduated  according  to  a 
false  idea  of  free-will  and  moral  responsibility.  All 
this  should  be  changed,  as  nobody  is  free,  and  we 
should  no  longer  punish  on  account  of  a  degree  of 
liberty,  but  rather  by  reason  of  having  in  view  the 
interests  of  society  and  in  proportioning  the  pun- 
ishment according  to  the  dangerousness  of  the 
criminal." 

With  this  doctrine  the  idea  of  medical  responsi- 
bility disappears  and  there  is  no  more  need  of  ex- 
perts. As  an  insane  man  or  a  semi-insane  man 
may  be  much  more  dangerous  to  society  than  a 
rational  man,  they  would  therefore  be  submitted 
to  a  much  severer  punishment,  independent  of 
their  degree  of  irresponsibility. 

b.  Objections  by  the  French  School:   Pouillee, 
Paulhan^  Tarde.    FerrVs  Reply 

The  chief  fault  of  this  doctrine  is  that  it  takes 
the  crime  only  into  consideration,  and  takes  no  ac- 
count of  the  criminal.  The  punishment  is  pro- 
portioned to  the  deed,  and  not  to  the  doer.    It  is 

[320] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE   SEMI-INSANE 

against  this  tendency  that  the  French  school  has 
shown  such  a  vigorous  reaction. 

I  have  already  spoken  (page  284)  of  the  objec- 
tions made  to  the  teachings  of  the  Italian  school 
on  the  essentials  of  crime,  but  I  must  add  a  word 
to  those  which  have  been  uttered  against  their 
conception  of  responsibility. 

Maurice  de  Fleury  says :  "  The  anatomical  type 
of  faith  is  the  negation  of  all  psychology  and  all 
criminal  sociology;  at  least  so  the  psychologists 
and  sociologists  energetically  protest.  They  pro- 
claim that  we  all  bear  a  moral  idea  within  us — the 
individual  reflection  of  the  great  general  idea  of 
morality — and  that  in  consequence  we  are  doubly 
responsible  both  objectively  and  subjectively,  in 
the  name  of  the  law  of  evolution  of  the  world  to- 
ward a  better  life,  and  in  the  name  of  that  law 
graven  on  our  conscience  in  the  form  of  a  com- 
mandment. This  is  the  idea  of  Herbert  Spencer, 
which  is  criticized  by  Fouillee.  According  to 
Paulhan,  moral  obligation  is  a  manifestation  of  an 
inherent  tendency  of  our  minds,  that  is  of  our  nat- 
ural need  of  keeping  in  harmony  with  the  general 
laws  which  control  the  evolution  of  the  world." 

I  will  not  take  up  the  question  of  the  origin  and 

intimate  nature  of  this  moral  obligation.     It  is  a 

philosophic  question  which  has  no  bearing  here; 

but  I  insist  upon  the  necessity  of  taking  this  moral 

ai  [321] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

obligation  into  account  as  one  of  the  motor  forces 
which  exert  an  influence  upon  the  actions  of  the 
criminal.  Here  then  we  have  the  idea  of  responsi- 
bility restored.  All  men  are  not  equally  normal 
in  their  psychism  as  regards  the  impulses  of  this 
moral  obligation. 

If  we  speak  of  medical  responsibility  as  I  have 
just  defined  it  we  can  say  with  Tarde  that  "  The 
idea  of  moral  responsibility  exists  independent  of 
belief  in  free-will.  We  should  consider  and  treat 
as  responsible  any  man  who  has  shown  himself  ex- 
tremely antipathic  to  his  equals  and  unsocial  if 
these  were  natural  characteristics  of  the  man  him- 
self." Maurice  de  Fleury  develops  this  thought 
thus:  "  Altho  we  may  not  be  free,  society  has  by 
no  means  the  right  to  treat  men,  even  tho  per- 
verted, like  mad  dogs  whom  they  want  to  get  rid 
of.  The  individual  has  a  value  in  himself,  the 
punishment  should  not  be  utilitarian  alone,  and 
have  for  its  sole  end  the  interests  of  society. 
Along  with  the  legal  or  objective  responsibility 
there  is  a  moral  or  subjective  responsibility.  This 
latter  is  the  more  complete  in  proportion  as  the 
individual  is  the  more  true  to  his  identity.  It  is 
diminished  when  his  personality  is  diseased." 

Saleilles  thus  places  Tarde  among  the  "  savants 
of  the  first  rank  "  and  those  "  eminent  sociologists" 
who  go  the  whole  length  of  accepting  the  law  of 

[322] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE   SEMI-INSANE 

casualty  in  its  application  to  facts  of  a  psychologi- 
cal order,  and  who  nevertheless  are  the  ardent  de- 
fenders, from  the  sociological  standpoint  at  least, 
of  the  survival  and  maintenance  of  the  idea  of  re- 
sponsibility. 

To  this  Ferri  replies  that  moral  responsibility 
without  free-will  is  nonsense.  Personal  identity  is 
only  a  lure,  and  the  application  of  Tarde's  doctrine 
would  be  unacceptable  and  dangerous  if  put  in 
practise. 

c.  The  Idea  of  Physiological  Responsibility  with- 
oiU  any  Reference  to  the  Idea  {whether  Affir- 
mative or  Negative)  of  Free-will  {Saleilles) 

What  conclusions  can  we  draw  from  all  this, 
and  how  shall  we  conciliate  such  apparently  con- 
tradictory opinions  ?  It  is  necessary  to  keep  the 
idea  of  responsibility  quite  separate  from  the  ques- 
tion of  free-will — either  to  affirm  or  deny  it.  The 
partizans  of  the  belief  in  free-will  must  no  longer 
think  that  they  have  the  "  exclusive  right  to  de- 
cide the  question  of  responsibility " ;  and  those 
who  deny  the  existence  of  free-will  must  no  longer 
feel  that  they  are  obliged  as  a  consequence  to 
deny  the  existence  of  responsibility. 

As  Saleilles  has  aptly  said:  "It  is  only  neces- 
sary that  people  who  believe  in  responsibility  and 
liberty,  and  thank  God  there  are  still  some  such, 

[323] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

should  still  consider  themselves,  by  the  very  virtue 
of  their  principles,  as  bound  to  believe  what  they 
have  always  believed,  and  must  remain  solemnly 
stationary  in  their  views,  and  that  they  should  re- 
fuse to  accept  any  means  of  social  defense  which 
an  opposing  school  could  offer  them.  There 
is  to-day  a  tendency  for  opposing  factors  to 
come  together  and  meet  on  the  ground  of  practi- 
cal issues.  This  is  a  great  step  forward  and  a  re- 
sult which  should  be  approved  and  upheld  every- 
where." "  Formerly  it  seemed  as  tho  every  good 
determinist,  in  order  to  satisfy  his  own  sense  of 
logic,  ought  to  deny  the  idea  of  responsibility,  but 
to-day  it  does  not  seem  at  all  inconsistent  for  him 
to  overthrow  his  own  premises  and  accept  all  the 
postulates  of  the  positivistic  Italian  school.  What 
delightful  inconsistencies,  however,  are  to  be  seen 
all  about  us,  and  how  we  finally  begin  to  feel  the 
hollowness  of  all  these  demonstrations  based  on 
pure  syllogisms,  which,  however  brilliant  they  may 
be,  have  never  checked  a  new  idea  any  more  than 
they  have  succeeded  in  saving  an  old  one. 

A  practical  meeting-ground  has  been  found ;  it 
is  that  of  medical  responsibility  which  takes  into 
consideration  only  the  psychic  neurons,  and  con- 
sequently has  nothing  to  do  with  free-will  or  philo- 
sophic fatalism.  This  is  an  idea  which  Saleilles 
has  also  admirably  developed. 

[324! 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

"In  reference  to  the  matter  of  free-will  our 
French  Penal  Code  leads  to  marvelous  conclusions. 
It  presupposes  free-will  everywhere,  but  it  never 
mentions  it  anywhere.  It  presumes  that  all  adults 
are  responsible  for  their  acts.  In  order  to  nega- 
tive this  presumption  it  demands  the  proof  of  de- 
mentia or  a  similar  pathological  condition.  The 
word  liberty  is  not  mentioned.  The  proof  to  be 
furnished  y  therefore^  bears  on  questions  of  patholog- 
ical diagnosis^  which  involve  no  philosophic  or  relig- 
ious convictions}  Nothing  is  more  simple.  The 
medicolegal  expert  will  only  have  to  pronounce 
on  the  existence  or  non-existence  of  insanity.  He 
is  competent  to  do  this.  He  is  not  asked  to  give 
his  opinion  upon  free-will ;  and  if  he  does  not  be- 
lieve in  free-will,  there  is  no  demand  made  upon 
his  conscience." ' 

From  this  there  may  be  deduced  a  definition  of 
responsibility,  "  but  be  it  understood  quite  apart 
from  any  idea  of  free-will,"  a  definition  of  sociolog- 
ical responsibility. 

"In  discernment  there  is  a  factor  of  moral  indi- 
viduality; it  is  important  furthermore  to  take  into 
account  the  strength  and  functioning  of  the  will 

'The  italics  are  mine. 

*  It  goes  without  saying  that  in  1904  I  did  not  know  of  this  pas- 
sage of  Saleilles,  which  appeared  in  1S98,  or  I  would  have  quoted 
it  in  my  article  in  the  Journal  de  Psychologic  Normale  et  Patho- 
logique. 

1 32s  3 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

and  everything  that  goes  to  make  up  moral  per- 
sonality, and  one  is  finally  led  up  to  an  idea  of  the 
norm.  The  normal  man  is  an  entity  capable  of 
responsibility,  and  it  lies  within  the  scope  of  man's 
faculties  to  determine,  so  far  as  motives  are  con- 
cerned, of  what  this  normality  should  consist.  It 
consists  in  responding,  as  other  men  do,  to  the  in- 
fluence of  ordinary  motives  of  daily  life,  which  rule 
conduct  and  human  action,  such  as  those  drawn 
from  religion,  from  morality  and  all  current  ideas. 
Not  to  respond  to  such  influences;  not  to  feel  any 
impression  from  things  that  impress  everybody 
else ;  first  to  get  to  the  point  of  no  longer  feeling 
these  motives,  then  little  by  little  to  cease  to  un- 
derstand them — all  this  means  variation  from  the 
normal.  This  may  make  progress  to  the  point 
when  one  responds  to  an  ordinary  normal  motive 
impulse  with  a  negative  reaction,  like  a  reflex 
which  is  quite  contrary  to  what  is  felt  by  other 
men,  or  it  may  appear  that  one  acts  without  any 
motive — even  with  the  insane  this  is  but  an  appear- 
ance— and  then  one  is  at  the  opposite  pole,  in  a 
state  of  absolute  abnormality,  which  constitutes 
mental  alienation." 

There  have  been  numerous  objections  to  this 
thesis,  which  seems  "  solid  and  definite."  Saleilles 
has  discust  these,  paying  particular  attention  to 
the  striking  objections  of  von  Listz,  professor  in 

[326] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

the  University  of  Berlin,  in  his  report  to  the  third 
International  Congress  of  Psychology.  We  who 
remain  exclusively  on  the  ground  of  medical  re- 
sponsibility, as  I  have  just  defined  it,  can  hold 
to  this  definition  of  psychic  responsibility.  As 
Saleilles  has  said,  this  condition  of  responsibility 
does  not  exist  for  us  because  it  has  been  experi- 
mentally proven  that  we  are  free,  but  by  the  nat- 
ural order  of  things.  It  is  the  physiological  norm. 
The  criterion  of  a  responsible  state  becomes,  for 
the  populace  who  believe  in  their  liberty,  just  what 
it  is  for  the  determinists  who  do  not  thus  believe. 
It  resolves  itself  into  the  idea  of  normality. 

This  whole  doctrine  may  be  summed  up  in  a 
word:  An  individual  whose  psychic  neurons  are 
normal  is  a  responsible  being. 

2.  Attenuated  Responsibility* 

I .  Difficulties  and  Misunderstandings  of  the  Ques- 
tion. Contradictory  Opinions.  Denial  of  Re- 
sponsibility 

From  the  idea  of  responsibility  established  in 
the  preceding  section,  the  correlative  idea  of 
semi-responsibility  or  attenuated  responsibility 
seems  to  be  a  natural  conclusion.    Along  with  in- 

'  See  "Attentuated  Responsibility,"  Journal  de  Psychologie 
Normale  et  Pathologique,  July-August,  1906,  p.  420. 

[327] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

dividuals  whose  psychic  neurons  are  perfectly 
healthy  and  normal  (responsible),  and  individuals 
whose  psychic  neurons  are  w^holly  diseased  and 
abnormal  (irresponsible),  we  understand  that  there 
are  others  whose  psychic  neurons  are  partially  or 
slightly  diseased  (semi-responsible). 

The  thing,  however,  is  not  quite  so  simple  as 
this,  and  I  shall  be  obliged  to  show  from  the  very 
start  in  this  section  some  of  the  contradictory 
opinions  that  have  lately  been  put  forth,  and  to 
show  how  important  is  the  opinion  of  some  of 
those  who  deny  attenuated  responsibility.* 

(a)  Humorous  Denials. — I  have  already  quoted 
(page  36)  the  sally  of  the  journalist  who  declared 
that  he  could  not  understand  responsibility  in 
halves  or  thirds  or  quarters.  In  the  same  way  Dr. 
Legrain,  the  Director  of  the  asylum  of  Ville-^^vrard, 
said  before  the  Societe  Generale  des  Prisons: 
"  This  conception  of  diminished  responsibility,  it 
must  be  said,  is  a  very  convenient  way  of  disgui- 
sing our  ignorance.  It  is  simply  a  conventional 
formula  which  has  permitted  us  to  dispense  with 
more  exact  knowledge  of  the  true  causes  and  true 

^Soci^t^  G^n^rale  des  Prisons,  December  21,  1904,  January 
25,  February  15,  March,  25,  1905;  Revue  P^nitentiare,  1905,  p.  43 
etseq.;  fitienne  Martin:  "The  Question  of  Attenuated  Responsi- 
bility," Archives  d'Anthropologie  Criminelie,  iv. ;  Maurice  Miche- 
lon  :  "  Les  Demifous  et  la  Responsabilit^  dite  Attdnu^e,"  Th^se 
de  Doctorat  en  Droit,  Lyon,  1906;  and  the  works  cited  of  Mo- 
rache,  Ballet,  Rd^is,  Saleilles,  Maurice  de  Fleury. 

[328] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

effects  and  to  reconcile  the  defense  of  certain  ab- 
normal individuals  with  the  exigencies  of  the  code. 
When  one  is  in  doubt,  or  when  one  dares  not  ren- 
der a  decided  opinion,  one  is  delighted  to  find  a 
middle  term  which  seems  to  settle  everything. 
But  I  am  under  the  conviction  that  it  is  but  a 
transitory  term,  that  it  has  nothing  scientific  about 
it,  and  that  it  is  far  from  being  satisfactory.  This 
sort  of  sectioning  of  the  spiritual  entity  into  two 
parts  would  end  in  fact  if  one  wished  to  be  logi- 
cal, in  the  practise  which  M.  Bonnefoy  prescribes: 
When  an  individual  shall  have  expiated  in  prison 
that  part  of  responsibility  which  pertains  to  his  re- 
sponsible half,  he  would  then  be  sent  to  a  hospital 
to  have  the  other  half  treated.  There  seems  to 
me  something  monstrous  in  such  a  contradiction ; 
the  mere  fact  of  putting  it  into  words  shows  that 
it  is  impossible  to  come  to  any  understanding 
on  such  grounds."  "  Attenuated  responsibility," 
says  Michelon,  Doctor  of  Law  of  the  Faculty  of 
Lyons,  "is  not,  as  in  1830,  merely  a  simple  prac- 
tical expedient  of  no  scientific  value.  In  embar- 
rassing cases  the  experts  have  conscientious  scru- 
ples and  then,  as  Professor  Garraud  has  said,  in 
order  to  attenuate  their  own  responsibility  they 
attenuate  that  of  the  accused.  And  this  fact  is  so 
true  that  certain  physicians,  and  those  by  no 
means  the  least  well  known,  make  no  scruples 

[329] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

about  giving  it  as  the  principal  justification  of  at- 
tenuated responsibility."  In  a  reunion  of  the 
Medico-Psychological  Society  in  1880,  as  one 
orator  was  enthusiastically  taking  the  part  of  at- 
tenuated responsibility,  Dr.  Legrand  du  Saule 
made  the  remark  that  the  examination  of  the  ac- 
cused was  very  difficult,  and  that  the  orator  would 
have  as  much  trouble  as  all  the  others  had  had  if 
he  were  physician  at  the  Depot  of  the  prefecture. 
His  conscience  as  an  honest  physician  would 
make  him  hasten  to  find  refuge  in  the  easy  verdict 
of  diminished  responsibility  and  in  its  gentle  rela- 
tive, graded  punishment.  These  are  examples  of 
what  one  might  call  the  humorously  negative  side. 
There  are,  however,  other  denials  which  are  more 
scientific. 

{d)  Scientific  Negations. — Leredu,  advocate  at 
the  Court  of  Paris,  in  his  report  to  the  Society  of 
Prisons,  states  that  many  savants  claim  that  the 
moment  there  is  a  break  in  responsibility,  such 
responsibility  ought  to  be  considered  as  non-exist- 
ent; according  to  them,  when  it  comes  to  a  ques- 
tion of  guilty  people,  they  are  all  diseased.  Others, 
among  whom  are  alienists,  only  look  upon  delin- 
quents of  limited  responsibility  as  a  sort  of  variety 
of  criminal,  admitting  that  from  the  moment  there 
is  any  responsibility,  however  diminished  it  may 
be,  there  is  a  crime,  and  that,  if  there  is  a  crime, 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

there  ought  to  be  a  punishment,  and  a  punishment 
that  is  properly  proportioned  to  the  criminahty 
of  the  author.  "  I  have  heard,"  says  Cau- 
viere,  professor  of  the  Faculty  of  Law,  "  serious- 
minded  physicians  uttering  the  most  diametrically 
opposed  opinions.  Some  among  them  have  main- 
tained that  there  is  no  such  thing,  properly  speak- 
ing, as  lucid  intervals,  and  that  it  is  wrong  to 
consider  an  insane  maniree  and  responsible  when 
it  is  a  question  of  a  pretended  period  of  remission. 
How  could  we,  as  men  of  the  world,  take  part  in  a 
question  which,  it  is  true,  is  distinct  from  this,  but 
nevertheless  closely  related  to  it — the  question  of 
knowing  whether  we  sometimes  have  to  deal  with 
the  semi-responsible  ? "  The  question  is  then  put  to 
the  physician,  and  Legrain  replies:  "  I  have  never 
been  able  quite  to  grasp  this  idea  of  partial  re- 
sponsibility ;  I  see  nothing  to  which  it  can  corre- 
spond. I  have  had  occasion  as  an  expert  to  exam- 
ine criminals  or  delinquents  on  many  occasions; 
I  have  always  been  able  to  determine  whether  the 
man  was  responsible  or  irresponsible;  I  have 
never  been  obliged  to  stop  at  an  intermediate 
stage  nor  to  declare  that  these  individuals  were 
partly  responsible  and  partly  irresponsible.  I  am 
no  longer  resolved  to  give  an  opinion  in  favor  of 
attenuated  responsibility,  which  could  only  be  a 
corollary  of  partial  responsibility  because  one  at- 

[33^] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

tenuates  the  penalty  and  not  the  responsibility; 
and  that  is  for  the  judge  and  not  for  the  expert  to 
decide."  Further  on  he  speaks  of  this  "  myth  of 
limited  responsibility."  The  president  said  to 
him:  "  In  your  eyes  there  is  no  such  thing  as  at- 
tenuated or  mitigated  responsibility ;  it  is  an  ex- 
pression which  you  do  not  wish  to  admit ;  it  is  a 
mask  of  ignorance.  From  your  point  of  view 
there  is  either  responsibility  or  there  is  no  re- 
sponsibility."    And  Legrain  replied,  "Exactly!" 

Dr.  Paul  Garnier,  director  of  the  Special  In- 
firmary at  the  Depot,  said  in  the  same  discussion: 
"  Physicians  do  not  possess  phrenometers  by 
which  they  can  divide  penal  imputability  into 
halves,  thirds,  or  quarters  of  responsibility." 
Charles  Constant,  advocate  at  the  Court  of  Paris, 
agrees  entirely  with  Legrain's  opinion :  "  There 
are  only  the  two  classes,  the  responsible  and  the 
irresponsible.  When  one  is  irresponsible  one 
ought  to  be  acquitted;  when  one  is  responsible 
one  ought  to  be  condemned." 

Paul  Jolly,  examining  magistrate  in  Paris,  is 
"  slightly  disconcerted  "  to  see  the  very  physicians 
who  invented  attenuated  responsibility  denying  it 
at  the  present  time.  "  If  this  is  the  way  things  are 
going;  if  medical  science  repudiates  the  theory  of 
attenuated  responsibility,  I  shall  ask  the  alienists 
why  they  so  often   and  apparently  so  willingly 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

pronounce  in  their  medico-legal  reports  that  the 
accused  has  only  attenuated  responsibility?" 
Another  of  the  examining  magistrates  of  Paris, 
Albanel,  holds  that  the  expression  "attenuated 
responsibility"  is  composed  of  two  words  which 
swear  at  one  another.  They  may  synthetically 
express  the  opinion  of  the  expert,  but  they  ought 
never  to  be  employed  in  his  conclusions. 

Michelon  has  studied  with  much  care  the  differ- 
ent philosophic  systems  dealing  with  attenuated 
responsibility.  Of  these  there  are,  says  he,  in  fact 
logically  only  two.  On  the  one  hand,  there  is  ab- 
solute free-will  and  on  the  other  absolute  deter- 
minism ;  both  lead  to  the  denial  of  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility. Further  on  he  says  that  it  is  evident 
that  attenuated  responsibility,  implying  necessa- 
rily the  idea  of  moral  responsibility,  can  not  exist 
as  a  distinct  idea  in  a  system  based  on  social 
defense. 

The  "insurmountable"  difficulties  which  are 
met  with  in  attenuated  responsibility  may  be  di- 
vided into  three  principal  groups.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  practically  impossible  to  measure  the 
mental  condition  and  responsibility.  In  the  sec- 
ond place,  attenuated  responsibility  does  not  corre- 
spond to  any  sharply  defined  clinical  type,  and, 
finally,  the  declaration  of  attenuated  responsibility 
leads  to  consequences  which  present  the  gravest 

[333] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

dangers  from  the  social  point  of  view,  and  which 
are  certainly  one  of  the  factors  of  the  rapidly  in- 
creasing tendency  toward  relapses  on  the  part  of 
the  criminal.  Michelon  develops  each  of  these 
points  of  view  and  then  adds :  "  Diminished  re- 
sponsibility, being,  therefore,  only  an  expedient, 
has  no  value  from  the  scientific  point  of  view.  It 
is  followed  by  deplorable  results.  Attenuated  re- 
sponsibility is  one  of  the  most  important  causes 
which  influence  judges  to  pronounce  light  sen- 
tences. In  a  way  one  might  apply  to  it  all  the 
evil  effects  which  are  brought  up  against  light  sen- 
tences. To  recognize  attenuated  responsibility 
is  to  weaken  the  moral  effect  of  the  punish- 
ment, for  it  practically  says  to  the  accused:  You 
have  a  physical  defect  by  virtue  of  which  you 
can  not  be  held  entirely  responsible  for  your 
actions." 

Michelon  quotes  a  phrase  of  Gilbert  Ballet's, 
which  we  shall  find  farther  on,  and  then  con- 
cludes :  "  Now  that  we  have  finished  the  examina- 
tion of  this  idea  of  attenuated  responsibility,  what 
is  there  left  of  it?  Its  historical  study  has  shown 
us  its  weakness.  The  philosophic  point  of  view 
has  been  no  more  favorable  to  it,  and  if,  after  all 
this,  anything  remains  of  it,  a  simple  glance  of  the 
eye  at  its  practical  consequences  would  be  suffi- 
cient to  annihilate  it."     Farther  on  he  says:  "  On 

[334] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

the  threshold  of  this  study  our  conclusion  can  only 
be  the  denial  ot  attenuated  responsibility.  ...  It 
is  an  idea  which  is  scientifically  false  and  practi- 
cally pernicious.  If  the  defects  in  the  law  were 
remedied,  the  idea  of  attenuated  responsibility 
would  disappear.  It  would  no  longer  be  neces- 
sary to  combat  it ;  it  would  disappear  of  itself,  hav- 
ing lost  its  only  use,  namely,  to  ease  the  con- 
sciences of  the  expert  and  the  judge.  One  would 
then  see  that  it  is  nothing  but  a  formula,  a  mere 
label,  corresponding  to  no  reality." 

2.  It  is  Necessary  to  Distinguish  between  the  Medi- 
cal Question  of  Attenuated  Respo7isibility  and 
the  Social  Question  of  the  Legal  Attitude  to  be 
Adopted  toward  the  Semi-responsible 

This  criticism  is  formal.  Should  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility be  entirely  eliminated  from  medical 
and  social  science.'*  And  is  the  expert  who  comes 
to  the  conclusion  of  attenuated  responsibility  con- 
sequently more  or  less  consciously  guilty  of  a 
scientific  heresy  or  of  a  medical  lie?  Further- 
more, are  the  very  foundations  of  this  book  to  be 
knocked  from  under  it?  Should  all  the  preceding 
pages  be  supprest?  Do  neither  the' semi-insane 
nor  the  semi-responsible  actually  exist?  I  do  not 
believe  it. 

In  order  to  arrive  at  a  definite  conclusion  and 
[  335  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

to  set  forth  clearly  in  the  discussion  the  objections 
which  I  shall  answer  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  it  is 
indispensable  to  distinguish  and  to  study  sepa- 
rately the  medical  question  of  attenuated  responsi- 
bility and  the  social  question  of  the  legal  attitude 
to  adopt  in  relation  to  the  semi-responsible.  These 
two  questions  are  equally  important,  and  have  a 
certain  limited  connection,  but  are  not  insepara- 
ble. Whatever  may  be  the  difficulties  which  are 
raised  by  the  second,  these  in  no  way  hinder  the 
truth  of  the  first,  if  this  truth  is  already  demon- 
strated. 

We  have  seen  that  the  preceding  authors  have 
constantly  complicated  the  objections  to  the  medi- 
cal doctrine  by  objections  drawn  from  the  so- 
cial consequences.  We  shall  try  to  reply  to  both 
classes  of  objections,  but  this  can  be  done  clearly 
only  by  separating  the  various  arguments  and 
by  studying  separately  and  successively  the  two 
points  of  view  which  are  in  reality  fundamentally 
very  distinct,  since  the  first  belongs  exclusively 
to  medicine  and  the  other  to  sociology  and  to  law. 

3.  The  Medical  Question  oj  Attenuated 
Responsibility 

{a)  Statement  of  the  Doctrine. — Set  apart  from  its 
legal  and  social  consequences  and  placed  beyond 
the  bounds  of  philosophic  doctrine,  upon  the  foun- 

[336] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

dation  of  physiopathology  and  medicine  alone,  the 
idea  of  attenuated  responsibility  seems  to  me  to 
be  beyond  discussion. 

Responsibility,  we  have  said,  is  a  lunction  of  the 
normal  psychic  neurons.  These  psychic  neurons 
are,  however,  legion,  and  the  cortical  psychic  cen- 
ters are  eminently  complex  and  divisible.  It  is 
therefore  easy  to  see  that  if  in  certain  cases  these 
centers  are  entirely  normal,  and  if  in  others  they 
are  profoundly  altered,  and  in  a  third  group  they 
are  partially  or  incompletely  modified,  we  must  in 
consequence  find,  in  addition  to  the  responsible 
and  the  irresponsible,  a  group  of  semi-responsible 
people — those  whose  responsibility  is  diminished 
or  attenuated. 

It  might  even  be  well  to  add  that  all  the  psychic 
neurons  have  not  equal  value  so  far  as  responsibil- 
ity is  concerned.  Alterations  of  the  neurons  of 
the  superior  psychism,  mental  disease,  leads  to 
irresponsibility,  but  alterations  of  the  neurons  of 
the  inferior  psychism  (psychic  disease)  only  par- 
tially disturbs  or  simply  attenuates  responsibility. 

The  hypnotized  subject,  whose  superior  centers 
do  not  perform  their  functions,  but  who  passively 
obeys  the  hypnotizer,  is  irresponsible  for  acts  com- 
mitted during  hypnosis.  The  psychasthenic  whose 
superior  centers,  while  not  annihilated  at  the  mo- 
ment of  a  criminal  act,  are  nevertheless  weakened, 
^'  [337] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

and  are  easily  diverted  and  dissociated  from  his 
inferior  centers,  is  neither  irresponsible  nor  re- 
sponsible. He  has  not  the  strength  to  resist  temp- 
tation that  a  normal  man  would  possess,  and 
yet  within  certain  limits  he  could  have  avoided 
committing  the  crime.  Such  a  man  is  semi- 
responsible. 

In  crowds  the  excitement  of  the  mass  dissociates 
the  polygons  of  the  individuals  who  let  themselves 
be  carried  away  by  their  leaders.  If  the  responsi- 
bility of  the  shepherd  is  increased,  that  of  the  flock 
is  diminished  or  attenuated. 

All  the  disordered  and  all  those  who  were 
slightly  unbalanced  whom  I  studied  in  my  third 
chapter  would  properly  be  included  in  this  cate- 
gory. The  epileptic  who  commits  a  crime  while 
not  in  an  attack  is  not  irresponsible,  as  is  the  epi- 
leptic who  commits  a  crime  during  an  attack,  but  he 
is  by  no  means  as  responsible  as  a  perfectly  sound 
individual.  As  Barboux  has  said,  "  There  is  a 
class  of  special  criminals  who  are  insane  enough 
never  to  go  to  prison  and  wise  enough  never  to  be 
placed  in  an  asylum";  and  Henri  Robert,  who 
quotes  this  phrase,  adds,  "  It  would  be  a  wrong,  in 
my  opinion,  to  regard  attenuated  responsibility  as 
a  premium  placed  upon  the  ignorance  of  a  judge 
who  can  be  influenced  by  phrases,  or  as  an  inade- 
quate statement  of  a  science  which  is  incapable  of 

[338] 


SOCIETY  AND    THE  SEMI-INSANE 

giving  an  exact  formula.  Attenuated  responsibil- 
ity exists." 

(^)  Reply  to  Objections. — It  seems  to  me  difficult 
to  maintain  objections  to  the  idea  of  attenuated 
responsibility  as  thus  outlined.  I  will  not  delay 
by  taking  up  the  objections  which  pertain  to  free- 
will and  the  philosophic  doctrines  generally  con- 
nected with  it.  We  have  seen  that  responsibility, 
such  as  I  have  defined  it,  has  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  philosophic  doctrines  concerning  free- 
will. Thus  Cauviere  demands  of  the  physiologists 
whether  in  their  opinion  moral  liberty  is  a  thing 
which  can  be  divided,  and  whether  they  can  speak 
of  penal  responsibility  in  the  same  breath  that 
they  admit,  according  to  spiritualistic  doctrine 
(which  is  that  of  the  orator),  the  primary  fact  of 
human  liberty.  Certainly  1  The  question  con- 
cerns the  functions  of  the  brain  and  the  psychic 
neurons,  therefore  the  spiritualist  may  regard  it 
and  study  it  under  the  same  order  and  in  the  same 
manner  as  the  materialist  in  general. 

In  the  same  way  Legrain  finds  it  strange  that  it 
should  be  the  same  men  who  hold  the  most  strictly 
to  the  integrity  and  unity  of  the  soul  who  the  most 
decidedly  claim  that  it  is  capable  of  being  parceled 
out.  I  see  nothing  strange  in  this;  whether  or 
not  one  admits  the  unity  of  the  soul,  it  is  the  par- 
celing out  of  the  cerebral  psychic  centers  that  is 

[339] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

meant,  for  this  is  wholly  another  thing  and  is  by 
no  means  contradictory.  In  the  same  way  Miche- 
lon  says:  "In  the  system  of  free-will  there  is  no 
place  for  attenuated  responsibility.  Such  a  free- 
dom is  not  divisible ;  it  is  or  it  is  not.  It  is  not 
possible  to  have  semi-liberty,  and  consequently  it 
is  not  possible  to  have  semi-responsibility.  How 
can  we  admit  without  being  absurd,"  he  adds, 
"  this  hybrid  mixture  of  determinism  and  liberty, 
and  thus  proclaim  the  dependence  of  independ- 
ence?" I  reply,  it  is  neither  hybrid  nor  contra- 
dictory ;  those  who  admit  liberty  admit  it  as  an 
attribute  of  the  spiritual  soul ;  but  here  I  am  con- 
cerned with  the  brain,  which  is  essentially  complex 
and  divisible. 

It  is  equally  inaccurate  to  say  that  there  is  no 
place  for  attenuated  responsibility  either  in  the 
deterministic  systems  or  in  the  systems  based  on 
social  defense.  In  the  determinist's  doctrine  the 
elements  of  determination  of  an  act  consist  in  part 
of  motor  impulses  and  motives  and  of  the  reaction 
of  these  psychic  neurons  on  these  motor  impulses 
and  motives.  Why  can  not  one  understand  the 
existence  of  a  partial  or  slight  degree  of  alteration 
of  these  psychic  neurons  and  consequently  of  their 
limited  responsibility?  In  the  doctrine  of  social 
defense  it  is  readily  admitted  that  the  idea  of  law 
and  punishment  is  a  weapon  which  society  has  a 

[  340  ] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

right  to  use  for  this  defense.  One  understands 
the  inequality  of  the  psychisms  of  different  indi- 
viduals when  one  sees  how  variously  they  respond 
to  these  important  influences  to  action. 

"  One  insurmountable  difficulty,"  adds  Michelon, 
"  is  the  practical  impossibility  of  measuring  either 
a  mental  condition  or  responsibility."  This  oft- 
repeated  truism  does  not  seem  to  me  very  redoubt- 
able. If  we  should  eliminate  everything  that  is 
not  susceptible  of  exact  measurement  from  physi- 
ology, psychology,  and  clinical  medicine,  what 
would  remain.?  It  is  certain  that  attenuation  of 
responsibility  is  not  capable  of  mathematical  men- 
suration. Magistrates  can  not  expect  an  expert  to 
render  his  verdict  in  fractions  as  it  is  estimated  in 
degrees  of  incapacity  following  accidents.^  But 
this  impossibility  of  mathematically  rating  the 
moral  incapacity  or  the  psychic  inferiority  of  an 
individual  does  not  exclude  the  reality  of  the 
thing.  French  law  very  wisely  admits  extenua- 
ting circumstances  which  are  not  susceptible  of 
mathematical  calculation.  They  are  drawn  from 
the  facts  and  from  what  accompanies  them.  They 
are  external.  The  psychic  reasons  for  attenuation, 
which  the  physician  studies,  are  closely  allied,, 
They  are  internal   and   arise  within   the  subject 

'Even  in  such  cases  exactness  is  it  not  only  apparent  and  fic- 
titious? 

[341] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

himself  on  the  ground  on  which  the  conflict  of  vo- 
litions takes  place.  They  exist,  as  do  the  exten- 
uating circumstances,  and  like  them  are  incapa- 
ble of  being  accurately  weighed  and  measured. 

Finally,  Michelon  objects  that  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility does  not  correspond  to  any  well- 
defined  clinical  type.  In  fact,  there  is  not  one 
type  only,  but  there  are  several  perfectly  defined 
types.  The  whole  of  Chapter  III.  of  this  book 
has  been  devoted  to  the  proof  of  this.  The  multi- 
plicity of  clinical  types  is  not  an  objection  to  be 
considered,  because  one  could  formulate  the  ob- 
jection with  as  much  force  in  cases  of  irresponsi- 
bility concerning  which  there  can  be  no  question. 

{c)  Confirmatory  Opinions  of  Various  Authors. — 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  many  adherents  to 
this  purely  medical  idea  of  attenuated  responsi- 
bility. Gilbert  Ballet  cites  the  example  already 
reported  of  the  epileptic  committing  a  crime  while 
not  in  one  of  his  attacks:  "  I  consider  that  in  such 
a  situation  one  would  be  right  in  saying  that  his  re- 
sponsibility was  diminished ;  that  is  to  say,  that  the 
patient  which  you  presented  to  me  is  a  patient  who 
has  committed  a  crime  or  a  misdemeanor,  not  un- 
der the  influence  of  a  pathological  motor  impulse, 
but  under  the  influence  of  an  ordinary  motor  im- 
pulse. Only  by  reason  of  his  pathological  condi- 
tion he  has  less  power  of  resistance.    This  is  a 

[342] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

situation  which  to  me  seems  to  require  special 
treatment ;  it  is  very  different  from  the  situation 
of  criminals  whom  I  might  call  irresponsible  all 
the  time,  and  also  very  different  from  those  who 
were  responsible.  Along  wdth  the  epileptic  I 
would  place  an  alcoholic  who  acts  not  under  the 
influence  of  an  hallucination,  but  who  having,  for 
example,  received  an  injury  from  his  neighbor, 
replies  with  more  vehemence  and  vivacity  than 
is  necessary,  precisely  because  his  alcoholic  habits 
have  engendered  in  him  a  certain  irritability. 
These  are  cases  which  ought  to  be  placed  in  a 
medical  category  between  those  whom  we  class 
as  wholly  responsible  and  wholly  irresponsible." 
Roubinovitch  says:  "All  the  culprits  submitted 
by  the  judges  to  a  mental  examination  are  not  in- 
sane ;  but  many,  perhaps  a  quarter,  of  those  who 
seem  peculiar,  have  psychic  defects  which  diminish 
their  penal  responsibility  to  a  degree  which  the 
judge,  aided  by  the  expert,  ought  to  be  able  to  es- 
tablish. For  myself,  therefore,  limited  responsi- 
bility exists  clinically,  and,  consequently,  judicially. 
In  two  hundred  and  fifteen  cases  in  which  I  have 
been  called  as  an  expert  I  have  found  exactly  fifty- 
four  in  which  I  have  been  led  to  pronounce  this 
form  of  responsibility."  He  repeatedly  analyzes 
these  observations  and  concludes:  "In  all  these 
cases  it  has  seemed  to  me  impossible  to  come  to  a 

[  343  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

conclusion  of  total  irresponsibility,  because  I  have 
proved  in  these  individuals  a  sufficiently  great 
knowledge  of  the  nature  of  their  criminal  actions; 
all  knew  why  they  had  acted  thus  and  what  profit 
they  might  draw  from  their  actions:  therefore,  in 
the  manner  in  which  they  accomplished  their 
deeds  there  was  something  normal.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  I  could  not  admit  that  they  were  com- 
pletely responsible,  it  was  by  reason  of  the  exist- 
ence of  a  certain  number  of  manifestations  which 
showed  that  their  nervous  system  was  not  like  that 
of  normal  individuals  in  addition  to  the  criminal 
acts  which  were  consciously  performed." 

Dr.  Legras,  physician  at  the  special  infirmary 
of  the  Depot,  says :  "  Each  one  of  us  possesses  an 
organism  which  physically  differs  from  that  of  his 
neighbor.  This  physical  difference  may  work 
fatally  in  the  mental  or  intellectual  organization. 
One  individual  will  enjoy  a  cerebral  mechanism 
which  physiologically  will  perform  its  functions  in 
a  sane  manner;  he  will  be  conscious  of  his  actions 
and  it  would  be  proper  to  consider  him  as  being 
entirely  responsible.  In  another,  on  the  contrary, 
the  intellectual  faculties  have  undergone  patho- 
logical disturbances;  there  is  no  doubt  that  a 
person  of  this  nature  is  not  responsible  for  his 
actions.  But  in  the  medicolegal  clinic  a  large 
group  of  accused  people  appear  in  whom  the  cere- 

■t  C  344  ] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

bral  mechanism  does  not  perform  its  physiological 
functions  quite  regularly,  and  yet  who,  neverthe- 
less, are  not  deranged."  We  have  cited  the  exam- 
ple of  the  epileptic;  "such  a  man  having  com- 
mitted a  crime  should  be  clinically  entered  in  the 
class  of  the  intellectually  weak-minded  in  whom 
a  hereditary  or  accidental  defect  has  brought 
about  a  sort  of  weakening  of  the  function  in  his 
faculties.  He  is  able  to  work;  he  is  not  incapable 
of  distinguishing  between  right  and  wrong,  never- 
theless his  cerebral  mechanism  never  works  well. 
He  is  like  a  watch  which  is  always  gaining  or  los- 
ing a  little.  Is  it  fair  to  hold  such  a  weak-minded 
person  entirely  responsible  or  irresponsible  as  the 
accused  of  the  two  other  categories?  This  would 
be  a  supremely  unjust  decision.  In  deciding  up- 
on the  conduct  of  the  various  accused  prisoners  one 
must  take  into  account  every  shade  of  difference 
which  distinguishes  their  cerebral  functioning 
from  the  normal.     If  it  is  true,  as  Leredu^  has 

'  "  It  is  certain,  as  Leredu  also  says,  that  a  great  many  people 
exist  who  have  physiological  defects  which  are  not  enough  to  free 
them  of  all  responsibility,  but  are  enough  to  dull  their  intelligence, 
render  their  wills  weak  and  vacillating,  and  to  lessen,  to  a  certain 
degree,  a  very  large  degree  in  fact,  their  responsibility."  In  the 
same  strain,  Paul  Jolly  adds :  "  In  fact,  one  can  not  deny  the  exist- 
ence of  certain  very  frequently  occurring  cases  of  limited  responsi- 
bility. To  try  to  deny  it  would  be  to  close  one's  eyes  to  the  fact." 
This  also  is  the  opinion  exprest  by  President  Henri  Joly,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Institute  and  honorary  dean  of  the  faculty, at  the  close 
of  this  long  discussion. 

[345] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

said,  that  diminished  responsibility  can  not  be  de- 
fined, it  nevertheless  corresponds  to  a  very  evident 
clinical  situation." 

According  to  Dr.  von  Listz,  "  It  is  an  incontest- 
able fact  that  there  are  individuals  with  weakened 
or  limited  or  diminished  responsibility — the  ad- 
jective matters  little.  I  grant  you  that  it  lacks 
something  in  precision;  but  if  you  can  find  a  bet- 
ter I  will  accept  it  gladly.  But  it  can  not  be  de- 
nied that  there  are  individuals  who  are  no  longer 
responsible  or  irresponsible  in  the  judicial  sense 
of  the  word."  To  these  very  distinct  statements 
made  by  men  of  high  standing  at  the  great  discus- 
sion of  the  Societe  Generale  des  Prisons  I  might 
add  a  few  opinions  of  classic  authors. 

Charles  Vallon  ("  Traite  de  Gilbert  Ballet ")  says : 
"  Between  the  integrity  of  the  intellectual  faculties 
and  complete  mental  alienation  there  are  infinite 
degrees  of  difference ;  it  is  therefore  perfectly  logic- 
al to  admit  a  state  between  complete  responsibil- 
ity and  complete  irresponsibility.  Such  a  way  of 
appraising  legal  responsibility  is  perfectly  in  accord 
with  scientific  ideas.  .  .  .  There  are  accused  per- 
sons who,  while  not  being  insane  and  consequently 
irresponsible,  show  a  special  mental  state  which  it 
is  right  to  take  into  account  in  pronouncing  upon 
their  responsibility.  Apart  from  mental  aliena- 
tion, which  does  away  with  responsibility,  there 

[346] 


SOCIETY   AND   THE   SEMI-INSANE 

are  numerous  disturbances  of  cerebral  health,  or 
intellectual  deficiencies,  of  such  a  nature  as  would 
constitute  an  excuse,  or  an  attenuating  circum- 
stance ;  or,  in  other  terms,  would  lessen  the  degree 
of  responsibility  of  a  delinquent  or  a  criminal. 
Many  of  our  reports  have  facts  of  this  nature  for 
their  object.  ...  It  is  not  possible  to  indicate 
mathematically  the  degree  of  alienation,  but  one 
can  employ  expressions  of  this  kind :  diminished  re- 
sponsibility— to  a  certain  degree — to  a  large  degree 
— to  a  very  large  degree — to  a  degree  which  should 
be  determined  by  the  magistrates — to  a  degree  of 
whose  limit  the  magistrates  will  be  better  able  to 
judge." 

Regis  ("  Precis  de  Psychiatric  ")  says :  "  Those 
who  are  most  convinced  of  the  absolute  irresponsi- 
bility of  the  insane  have  themselves  admitted,  in 
formal  terms,  the  fact  that  the  semi-insane  have 
simply  diminished  responsibility,  and  J.  Falret  has 
said  on  this  point :  *  Such  cases  present  a  mixt  con- 
dition, intermediary  between  reason  and  madness, 
in  which  it  is  permissible  to  discuss  the  degree  of 
responsibility,  and  to  admit  entire  responsibility 
or  diminished  responsibility  according  to  the  par- 
ticular case  and  where  it  is  not  a  question  of  apply- 
ing the  criterion  of  absolute  irresponsibility.'  It 
seems  difficult  for  us  not  to  join  in  such  a  just 
conclusion  as  that  of  J.  Falret."     Regis  continues: 

[347] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

"  I  said  to  a  jury  in  a  recent  case,  *  Humanity  un- 
fortunately is  not  divided  psychologically  into  two 
wholly  distinct  classes,  with  the  sane-minded  and 
entirely  responsible  on  one  side,  with  the  entirely 
irresponsible  insane  on  the  other.  But  between 
the  two  there  lies  a  great  region,  a  so-called  border- 
land, or  middle  distance,  peopled  by  individuals 
who  have  blemishes  of  various  degrees  and  who  in 
consequence  have  different  degrees  of  responsibil- 
ity. Butalthoone  can  not  measure  with  the  milli- 
meter the  degree  of  responsibility  of  these  inter- 
mediary people  one  can  nevertheless  establish  for 
them,  from  this  point  of  view,  a  sort  of  graded  lad- 
der, using  an  approximately  accurate  notation 
which  would  divide  them  into  three  degrees  of 
attenuation :  slight  attenuation,  rather  large  degree 
of  attenuation,  very  large  degree  of  attenuation.* 
These  are,  in  fact,  the  three  terms  which  are  habit- 
ually used.  This  knowledge  of  diminished  re- 
sponsibility and  of  its  practical  medical  application 
has,  moreover,  great  importance  for  the  expert 
physician,  as  in  a  great  number  of  cases  sub- 
mitted to  him  for  examination  he  could  say  of 
the  greater  number  that  they  were  acting  while 
in  incomplete  or  intermediary  pathological  con- 
ditions which  do  not  carry  with  them  absolute 
irresponsibility,  but  a  diminished  degree  of  re- 
sponsibility." 

[34S] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

{d)  Conclusions. — Separated  from  the  consider- 
ation of  the  social  and  legal  application  (which 
we  shall  study  in  the  following  section),  the  doc- 
trine of  attenuated  or  limited  responsibility  (I 
do  not  call  it  partial)  ^  is  scientifically  established 
and  is  positive. 

It  is  therefore  by  no  means  permissible  to  say 
that  attenuated  responsibility  is  only  a  subterfuge 
invented  by  cowardly  or  ignorant  experts  to  lessen 
their  own  responsibility  or  that  of  the  magistrate. 
It  can  no  longer  be  said  with  Rougier,  Director  of 
lectures  at  the  Law  School  of  Paris,  and  Kahn, 
advocate  at  the  Court  of  Paris,  that  it  is  a  thing 
"  which  one  feels,"  "  which  one  recognizes  or  de- 
nies according  to  his  temperament,"  that  it  is  the 
expression  of  hesitation  and  of  the  expert's  "  diag- 
nostic doubt,"  which  does  not  correspond  to  any 
"  reality  from  a  medical  and  scientific  point  of 
view,"  and  which  does  not  constitute  a  "  scientific- 
ally established  truth." 

Diminished  responsibility  is  a  scientific  fact, 
scientifically  established  and  capable  of  being  an- 
alyzed. An  expert  may  conscientiously  and  scien- 
tifically close  his  report  with  any  of  the  three 
following  propositions :  i ,  the  accused  is  not  irre- 

'The  question  of  partial  responsibility  is  wholly  different  and  I 
would  only  complicate  this  chapter  unnecessarily  by  discussing  it 
here.  For  partial  responsibility  see  "Traits  de  Gilbert  Ballet," 
p.  1469,  and  La  Revue  Pdnitentiaira,  1905,  p.  207. 

[349] 


THE  SEIVII-INSANE 

sponsible;  2,  the  accused  is  responsible;  3,  the  re- 
sponsibility of  the  accused  is  limited  or  attenuated 
to  a  great  degree,  or  to  a  slight  degree. 

4.  Social  Questio7i  of  the  Legal  Attitude  to  be 
Adopted  toward  the  Semi-insane 

If  I  wanted  to  keep  wholly  within  my  role  of 
physician,  I  would  stop  with  the  conclusion  at  the 
end  of  the  preceding  paragraph:  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility exists  as  a  scientific  fact;  even  altho, 
as  has  been  said,  the  social  consequences  might 
be  most  deplorable,  the  duty  of  the  expert  would, 
however,  be  none  the  less  distinctly  outlined.  He 
should  state  it  clearly  when  his  scientific  convic- 
tion is  made.  As  for  the  rest  it  is  the  business  of 
the  sociologist  or  jurist. 

I  would  not  be  right  in  reasoning  thus,'and  I  have 
no  wish  to  avoid  the  study  of  the  social  and  judicial 
question  (in  spite  of  my  incompetence),  because, 
even  from  this  point  of  view,  the  relations  of  the 
problem  to  medicine  are  very  numerous  and  close. 
I  will  therefore  try  at  least  to  set  forth  the  terms  of 
the  following  problem :  Given  a  criminal  declared  to 
be  semi-responsible  by  the  physician,  what  are  the 
duties  and  rights  of  society  to  such  an  individual  ?  * 

*  See,  for  the  rest  of  the  paragraph,  the  discussion  of  the  Soci^t^ 
G^ndrale  des  Prisons  in  La  Revue  Pdnitentiaire,  and  the  thesis 
of  Michelon. 

[350] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE   SEMI-INSANE 

{a)  Attejtuated  Responsibility  in  Relation  to  tlie 
Laws  as  they  Stana. — French  law  does  not 
recognize  attenuated  responsibility.  Michelon 
proves  this  "  with  stupefaction."  As  Leredu  re- 
marks, the  civil  code^  seems  to  have  admitted 
the  existence  of  two  kinds  of  abnormality,  making 
a  distinction  between  interdiction  and  judiciary 
counsel. 

Michelon,  from  whom  I  have  gathered  this  in- 
formation, does  not  think  by  virtue  of  our  Article 


*  I  have  purposely  studied  only  the  criminal  side,  which  has  been 
very  difficult,  and  I  have  neglected  altogether  the  civil  side  (capac- 
ity, interdiction),  which  is  still  more  difficult  to  grasp  and  on  which, 
I  confess,  I  am  not  so  well  prepared.  But  according  to  the  penal 
code  there  are  only  the  responsible  and  the  irresponsible,  and  the 
dements  (article  64). 

In  some  foreign  countries  these  cases  are  provided  for.  The  new 
penal  code  of  Italy,  for  example,  states  (Article  47)  that  when  a 
mental  condition  is  such  that  imputability  is  largely  diminished  with- 
out suppression,  the  question  of  prescribing  punishment  is  itself 
diminished,  and  the  degree  of  reduction  is  indicated  in  the  para- 
graph which  follows  it.  In  Greece,  likewise,  there  is  an  arrange- 
ment of  the  same  kind.  If  it  is  proved  clearly  and  unquestionably 
that  the  power  of  reason  is  not  wholly  lost,  but  is  materially 
altered  and  diminished  to  such  a  degree  that  it  would  be  wrong 
under  such  conditions  to  apply  the  punishment  pronounced  by 
law,  then  a  lesser  degree  of  punishment  than  the  one  regularly 
prescribed  may  be  imposed.  Along  the  same  line.  Article  11  of 
the  preliminary  proceedings  of  the  Swiss  penal  code  contains  a 
regulation  conceived  in  the  same  spirit.  If  the  mental  health  of 
the  delinquent  is  only  slightly  abnormal,  or  if  his  consciousness  is 
impaired,  or  if  his  mental  development  is  incomplete,  the  judge 
may  freely  diminish  the  punishment.  One  finds  similar  disposi- 
tions in  the  penal  code  of  the  canton  of  Neuchatel  and  in  those  of 
Denmark  and  Sweden. 

[351] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

463  that  in  France  we  can  fit  the  idea  of  attenu- 
ated responsibility  to  attenuated  circumstances 
and  diminish  the  punishment.  "Attenuating 
circumstances,"  says  he,  "  are  not  really  brought 
out  for  that  reason.  They  have  to  do  rather 
with  the  provisional  and  accidental  circumstan- 
ces which  surround  the  crime,  and  not  to  prom- 
inent conditions  existing  previous  to  the  crime, 
such  as  the  pathological  condition  of  the  crim- 
inal." 

But  this  is  not  the  general  opinion.  "  Article 
463,"  Leredu  says,  "  by  its  free  interpretation  and 
natural  application  of  attenuating  circumstances 
will  permit  the  imposing  of  a  punishment  with 
necessary  moderation."  Albanel  says:  "  I  believe 
that  the  texts  of  the  laws  in  force,  joined  to  the 
practise  of  criminal  jurisprudence,  are  sufficient  to 
meet  all  necessities,  and  that  outside  of  cases  of 
absolute  irresponsibility  which  are  regularly  es- 
tablished, the  psychiatric  statements  coming  from 
an  expert  should  permit  one  to  settle  not  only  the 
punishment  to  be  pronounced,  but  even  to  apply 
more  extended  measures  of  indulgence,  such  as 
nolle  pros.,  acquittal,  respite,  moderation  of  the 
punishment,  and  even  conditional  liberty  and  total 
or  partial  forgiveness."  Looking  at  it  from  this 
point  of  view  Henri  Joly  recalls  that  in  Article  64 
there  are  the  words  "  when  he  has  been  constrained 

[352] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

by  a  force  which  he  is  not  able  to  resist."  ^  He 
adds  that  "  this  word  force  may  be  understood  in 
a  very  general  way,  and  that  it  lends  itself  to  con- 
siderable extension,  that  it  may  be  extended  to  the 
justification  of  many  cases  of  hypnotic  maneuvers 
of  which  the  formulators  of  the  code  could  never 
have  thought,  and  to  certain  morbid  conditions, 
however  prolonged  or  temporary  they  might  be." 
The  curtailing  of  a  punishment  of  which  the  semi- 
insane  might  thus  get  the  benefit  is  not  always 
sufficient. 

"  Let  us  suppose,"  says  Jules  Jolly,  advocate  at 
the  Court  of  Paris,  "  that  two  individuals,  one 
entirely  responsible  and  the  other  with  limited  re- 
sponsibility, have  committed  the  same  misde- 
meanor. The  first,  for  reasons  connected  with 
facts  which  have  nothing  to  do  with  his  psychic 
condition,  deserves  the  benefit  of  the  most  atten- 
uated  circumstances,  and  the  tribunal   applying 

'  These  are  the  expressions  which  cause  the  editor  of  "  Le  Matin  " 
(July  i8,  1906)  to  say  that  this  article  64  "  flagrantly  disagrees  with 
the  principle."  "The  very  idea  of  the  penal  code  taken  as  a  whole 
is,"  says  the  same  author,  **  that  free-will  does  not  exist  in  the 
absolute  sense  of  the  word,  and  determinism,  by  scientifically 
proving  that  free-will  does  exist,  is  sufficient  to  demonstrate  the 
irresponsibility,  or  at  least  the  very  attenuated  responsibility,  of  the 
criminal  or  the  culpable.  The  latter  always,  to  a  certain  degree 
at  least,  will  have  been  constrained  by  a  force  which  he  is  not  able 
to  resisty  I  believe  that  this  difficulty  no  longer  exists  with  the 
medical  idea  of  responsibility,  which  is  independent  of  the  doctrine 
of  free-will  and  based  only  on  the  normal  condition  of  the  psychic 
neurons. 

^3  [353] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

Article  463  to  his  case  would  give  him  the  mini- 
mum punishment.  The  second  deserves  the  same 
indulgence  by  reason  of  the  facts  connected  with 
the  case  and,  in  addition,  his  responsibility  was 
limited.  What  treatment  should  the  tribunal 
mete  out  to  him.?  Exactly  the  same  as  for  the 
preceding?  It  will  then  be  absolutely  impossible 
to  take  any  account  of  limited  responsibility  ex- 
cept in  the  case  of  attenuating  circumstances,  and 
it  would  be  exactly  the  same  if,  as  has  been  sug- 
gested, very  attenuating  circumstances  were  intro- 
duced into  our  laws.  From  this  statement  I  con- 
clude that,  if  one  admits  limited  responsibility,  it 
is  necessary  to  create,  along  with  it  and  outside  of 
the  pale  of  extenuating  circumstances,  a  special 
ruling  for  dehnquents  belonging  to  this  category." 
Leredu  also  thinks  that  in  certain  cases  "  Article 
463  does  not  permit  the  judge  to  descend  suffi- 
ciently low  in  the  application  of  punishment. 
Perhaps,  if  it  were  permitted  to  impose  as  slight  a 
degree  of  punishment  as  that  which  the  law  im- 
poses, one  would  not  so  often  find  equipments 
which  seem  unjustifiable  " ;  which,  nevertheless, 
are  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  judge  prefers 
to  go  to  the  extreme  of  absolution  rather  than  to 
pronounce  a  punishment  which,  by  reason  of  its 
severity,  would  be  unjust.  There  should  also  be 
"  included  in  our  penal  legislation  a  special  article 

[354] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

which  should  provide  that  in  the  presence  of  a 
culpable  or  an  accused  person,  who  has  been 
proved  to  be  partially  lacking  in  responsibility, 
the  judge  should  be  permitted  to  pronounce 
slighter  punishment,  this  special  article  being  al- 
ways of  course  combined  with  Article  463."  Here 
we  have  the  first  desideratum  proposed  to  the  re- 
formers of  our  penal  law. 

id)  Objections  to  the  System  0/  Shortened  Publish- 
ment.— There  have  been  the  strongest  objections 
to  the  preceding  system.  Rapoport,  advocate  at 
the  Court  of  Paris,  says  that  it  is  dangerous  "  for 
individuals  whose  moral  energies  are  very  weak  to 
make  them  aware  of  this  by  telling  them :  *  The 
fact  is,  your  responsibility  is  very  attenuated ;  no 
one  can  hold  much  against  you.'  That  is  almost 
the  same  as  telling  them, '  Continue  in  your  harm- 
ful ways ! '  It  maybe  that  it  would  diminish  their 
responsibility,  but  it  is  very  certain  that  it  would 
also  diminish  their  faculty  of  moral  resistance. 
To  reverse  a  celebrated  saying,  which  would  make 
me  say,  if  limited  responsibility  does  not  exist  it 
ought  to  be  invented,  I  would  say  on  the  other 
hand  that  even  if  attenuated  responsibility  exists 
one  must  to  a  certain  measure  and  in  a  certain 
sense  take  no  account  of  it.  I  mean  that  it  should 
not  be  admitted  to  the  people  themselves." 

"  In  diminishing  the  culpability  of  a  man  first 
[355] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

by  limited  responsibility  and  then  by  extenuating 
circumstances,  even  tho  they  may  be  very  attenu- 
ating, you  will  arrive,"  says  Le  Poittevin,  profes- 
sor of  the  Faculty  of  Law  in  Paris,  "  at  practically 
nothing  more  than  a  pat  for  a  punishment."  The 
saying  has  taken  hold  in  Paris  and  has  been 
widely  quoted. 

According  to  Henri  Sauvard,  advocate  at  the 
Court  of  Paris  ("  A  New  Excuse  Founded  on  the 
Idea  of  Limited  Responsibility  "),  both  would  be 
"at  the  same  time  irrational,  useless,  and  danger- 
ous in  practise.  It  would  be  demoralizing  to 
social  conscience;  it  would  be  dangerous  as  a 
legal  formula,  instituting  a  new  excuse,  and  would 
officially  proclaim  to  the  public  an  idea  of  limited 
responsibility." 

"When  a  tribunal,"  says  Gilbert  Ballet,  "takes 
attenuated  responsibility  into  consideration  in 
forming  a  judgment  to  diminish  the  punishment: 
I.  He  condemns  the  culpable  individual.  This 
is  the  first  fault,  for  it  condemns  an  individual 
whom  the  physician  has  not  been  able  to  pro- 
nounce truly  irresponsible,  since  he  has  the  idea  of 
right  and  wrong  and  of  the  bearing  of  his  actions, 
and  since  he  does  not  obey  absolutely  the  patho- 
logical motor  impulse,  but  is  only  abnormal.  2. 
He  condemns  him  to  a  slight  punishment.  This  is 
the  second  fault,  at  least  from  the  point  of  view  of 

[356] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

social  protection.  In  the  same  way  you  have 
stamped  upon  the  brow  of  this  individual,  who 
after  all  was  defective,  organically  speaking,  the 
stigma  of  criminal,  which  ought  not  to  be  there; 
on  the  other  hand,  you  have  not  protected  society, 
for  you  have  abbreviated  his  punishment,  thus  per- 
mitting him  all  the  sooner  to  resume  the  round  of 
his  misdemeanors.  You  have  therefore  at  one 
and  the  same  time,  it  might  as  well  be  said  frankly, 
for  frankness  is  essential  in  such  a  discussion,  per- 
formed an  act  of  injustice  and  have  failed  to  pro- 
tect society." 

Paul  Garnier  says  that  they  are  beginning  to 
humanize  the  penal  code.  "This  providential 
Article  463  will  have  a  beneficial  effect,  a  logical 
tempering  of  the  excessive  rigor  in  the  law.  In 
theory  it  is  just,  reasonable,  and  humane.  In 
practise  and  in  the  condition  of  our  judiciary  and 
administrative  organization  it  will  be  pushed  to 
absurd  limits.  How  deplorable  its  results  will  be ! 
The  very  reasons  which  are  of  benefit  to  the  delin- 
quent are  precisely  the  same  which  will  tend  to 
bring  about  recurrences  and  to  render  the  individ- 
ual dangerous.  Justice  has  failed  to  attain  its  true 
object,  which,  above  all,  is  that  of  social  preserva- 
tion. Under  these  conditions  the  system  of  social 
defense  is  only  a  dangerous  delusion.  Under 
these  conditions  it  would  not  be  permissible,  so  to 

[357] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

speak,  for  justice  to  strike  as  it  should  and  where 
it  should." 

According  to  Grimanelli,  Administrative  Direc- 
tor of  the  Penitentiary,  "  the  worst  of  all  solutions 
is  that  which  consists  in  applying  to  the  semi- 
responsible  a  scale  of  reduced  punishment  either 
by  means  of  commutation  or  by  shortening  the 
length  of  the  punishment.  Of  all  solutions  the 
last  is  the  most  harmful  to  the  individual  and  to 
social  interests.  For  short  punishments,  under 
these  conditions,  act  neither  as  repressive  agencies 
nor  as  curative  agencies ;  and  it  is  even  probable 
that  such  a  regime  of  short  penalties  will  only  end 
by  aggravating,  without  any  benefit  to  society,  the 
case  of  the  unfortunate  individuals  to  whom  it 
would  be  applied,  without  in  any  sense  ameliora- 
ting the  conditions  of  their  lives  or  conduct." 

Prins,  professor  at  the  University  of  Brussels, 
says:  "The  number  of  short  punishments  is  in- 
creasing everywhere,  and  everywhere  there  are 
complaints.  We  must  find  some  remedy  for  this 
increase." 

And  Gar9on,  professor  of  the  Faculty  of  Law  in 
Paris, adds:  "  First  of  all  we  must  shun  these  tri- 
fling penalties,  which  are  of  no  use  whatsoever 
either  socially  or  individually.  They  do  not  pre- 
serve order,  and  they  do  not  improve  the  character 
of  the  guilty."     Finally,  Michelon  says :  "  The  idea 

[358] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

of  attenuated  responsibility  has  deplorable  results. 
If  on  every  side  one  sees  with  terror  the  increasing 
number  of  relapses  into  crime,  one  can  see  at  the 
same  time  the  pernicious  role  which  this  idea  of 
attenuated  responsibility  is  playing.  Everywhere 
people  are  beginning  to  raise  their  voices  in  alarm. 
Everybody  knows  that  the  plague  of  our  judicial 
system  is  the  abuse  of  short  penalties.  There  is 
already  a  whole  literature  published  on  the  incon- 
veniences of  such  a  system.  It  has  been  felt  for  a 
long  time  that  short  punishments  are  not  success- 
ful to  improve  the  condemned,  but  are  amply  suf- 
ficient to  corrupt  them." 

This  is  a  feeling  which  seems  to  be  wide-spread. 
If  the  idea  of  diminished  responsibility  is  brought 
forth  only  for  the  purpose  of  diminishing  the  pun- 
ishment, the  results  are  bad.  What  deduction  can 
one  make  from  this?  Simply  that  one  must  look 
for  another  social  and  legal  application  of  this 
idea,  but  not  that  one  should  fail  to  make  any  so- 
cial or  legal  application  of  the  idea  of  attenuated 
responsibility. 

When  Michelon  says  that  the  idea  of  attenuated 
responsibility  has  had  deplorable  results,  and  when 
Rapoport  says  that  if  a  limited  responsibility  existed 
it  ought  not  to  be  taken  into  account  nor  spoken 
of  nor  acknowledged,  I  believe  that  these  authors 
seem  to  have  departed  in  a  strange  way  from  their 

[359] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

premises  In  drawing  such  conclusions.  If  short- 
ened punishments  logically  lead  to  the  condemna- 
tion of  attenuated  responsibility,  it  can  only  be  if 
short  punishments  are  the  only  possible  legal  ap- 
plication of  attenuated  responsibility.  But  this 
seems  to  me  not  yet  to  have  been  proved. 

I  therefore  conclude  this  paragraph  by  'saying 
it  would  be  most  distressing  and  harmful  if  the 
consideration  of  semi-responsibility  should  lead  to 
the  multiplication  of  short  punishments.  Let  us 
see  if  there  is  not  some  other  method  of  applying 
this  scientific  and  definitely  acquired  idea  of  lim- 
ited responsibility  to  the  law. 

{c)  The  Prmciples  07t  which  Reforms  Ought  to  be 
Based. — It  is  necessary  in  order  to  assure  any  re- 
sults from  this  treatise,  to  lay  down  the  principles 
which  we  ought  constantly  to  have  in  mind  when 
we  are  formulating  the  reforms  which  we  wish  to 
bring  about  in  any  legislation  for  semi-insanity. 
Society  ought,  according  to  my  way  of  thinking, 
to  take  an  equal  interest  in  its  own  defense  and  in 
the  assistance  and  treatment  of  the  semi-insane. 

For  the'^semi-insane  who  are  harmful,  social  de- 
fense ought  to  be  severe,  at  least  as  severe  as  for 
those  who  are  in  possession  of  their  reason  and 
are  fully  responsible.  And,  to  a  certain  degree, 
the  means  of  this  social  defense  ought  to  be  the 
same  both  for  the  semi-insane  and  for  the  rational. 

[360] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE   SEMI-INSANE 

We  have  frequently  repeated  the  fact  that  the 
semi-insane  man  differs  from  the  insane  in  that 
ordinary  motor  forces  have  a  certain  action  upon 
him.  The  ideas  of  law,  of  prohibition,  of  punish- 
ment, and  prison  have  an  influence  upon  the  de- 
termination and  upon  the  actions  of  the  semi-in- 
sane. He  understands  the  duties  of  the  policeman. 

In  opposition  to  Henri  Robert,  who  considers 
it  "  unjust  to  keep  the  semi-insane  man  impris- 
oned," I  hold  that  the  idea  of  punishment  and 
prison  ought  to  figure  in  the  decisions  of  society 
concerning  the  semi-responsible.  Roubinovitch 
and  Grimanelli  have  remarked  "that  the  fact  of 
being  deprived  of  one's  liberty  in  a  prison  was  ex- 
tremely hard  to  delinquents  of  limited  responsi- 
bility." Hence  if  the  measure  has  a  certain  action 
upon  their  psychism,  society  has  no  right  to  de- 
prive them  of  this  measure.  As  Professor  Gar9on 
has  said,  one  should  not  pronounce  a  punishment 
which  the  delinquent  can  not  understand.  This 
is  the  case  of  the  insane  man.  But  since  the  semi- 
insane  man  can  understand,  he  needs  punishment. 

But  punishment  is  not  enough;  society  does  not 
confine  itself  to  the  function  of  defending  itself 
against  the  harmful  semi-insane;  we  ought  to  help 
and  treat  them.  Punishment  and  prison  by  no 
means  exhaust  the  duties  of  society  toward  the 
semi-insane.     This  is  what  is  understood  as,  and 

[361] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

what  is  called,  the  German  system.  In  this  sys- 
tem, as  set  forth  by  Adrien  Roux,  Dean  of  the 
Faculty  of  Law,  the  punishment  is  first  dimin- 
ished by  Article  57  of  the  German  penal  code. 
"  If,  however,  this  delinquent  seems  to  the  experts 
dangerous  to  the  public  safety  by  his  persistent 
cerebral  weakness,  the  repressive  tribunal  should 
order  a  provisional  guard  for  the  condemned. 
Then  the  procedure  should,  as  for  the  insane,  take 
place  before  the  civil  tribunal,  which  ought  again  to 
pronounce  sentence,  or  interdiction  and  definite 
confinement,  or  this  latter  measure  only.  If  the 
delinquent  is  punishable,  the  sojourn  in  the  hospi- 
tal should  not  begin  until  after  the  expiration  of 
the  punishment." 

This  is  the  very  sound  idea  which  Lacassagne 
and  fitienne  Martin  have  developed.  "  The  first 
object  of  punishment  should  be  social  defense. 
.  .  .  The  second  should  be  a  means  of  education 
and  a  development  of  the  mental  faculties.  .  .  .  To 
attain  this  secondary  and  very  humane  end  it 
would  be  necessary  for  the  jurists  to  admit  to  their 
codes  the  idea  of  indeterminate  condemnation, 
and  that  the  penitentiary,  instead  of  being  simply 
a  place  of  confinement,  should  be  transformed  into 
a  sort  of  moral  orthopedic  school  where  one  would 
educate  those  individuals  whose  moral  faculties 
were  but  slightly  developed,  jnst  as  one  educates 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

idiots  or  imbeciles  in  medico-pedagogic  establish- 
ments. One  should  never  therefore  say,  as  has 
been  said,  the  semi-insane  is  either  a  guilty  man 
who  should  be  punished,  or  a  patient  who  should 
be  shut  up.  The  insane  man  is  only  a  patient. 
The  rational  man  only  is  guilty.  The  semi-insane 
man  is  both.  For  him  one  should  not  choose  be- 
tween the  prison  and  the  asylum ;  but  one  should 
make  him  go  to  both,  and  herein  lies  the  great 
practical  difficulty  of  the  question." 

When  one  compares  a  semi-insane  man  to  the 
sane  and  to  the  guilty,  one  should  not,  like  Henri 
Joly,  say  that  he  is  neither  the  one  thing  nor  the 
other,  but  rather  that  he  is  both  the  one  and  the 
other.  To  the  same  author  the  German  solution 
appears  "  peculiar."  "  This  does  not  seem  to  me 
a  proper  solution  to  recommend,  at  least  not  to 
the  French  public."  Give  men  then  a  system 
which  would  consist  in  treating  the  patient  for  two 
diseases  and  in  employing  at  the  same  time  the 
remedies  intended  for  one  and  the  other.  And 
why  not?  In  France  as  well  as  in  Germany  if 
a  syphilitic  breaks  his  leg  one  does  not  refuse  to 
take  him  to  the  hospital  in  an  agonizing  dilemma 
whether  he  shall  be  treated  for  his  fracture  or  his 
syphilis ;  I  believe  that  they  would  treat  both  troub- 
les at  the  same  ti-^ie,  and  I  hold  that  the  two 
cures  would  help  rather  than  hurt  him.     I  do  not 

[363] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

believe  therefore  that  it  is  necessary  to  say,  with 
Professors  Prins,  von  Listz,  von  Hammel  (of  the 
University  of  Amsterdam),  and  many  contempo- 
raneous savants,  that  the  state  has  only  the  mis- 
sion of  social  protection  and  social  defense  against 
social  danger,  and  has  only  one  essential  end  to  at- 
tain— "  the  preservation  of  society  against  crime." 
It  also  needs  to  assist  and  treat  the  delinquent 
when  he  is  semi-insane. 

These  are  the  two  principles  on  which  one 
ought  to  found  the  conduct  of  society  in  relation 
to  the  delinquent  and  criminal  semi-insane.  Let 
us  press  the  question  still  a  little  further  and  see 
what  society  ought  to  try  to  do  to  solve  every 
point  in  this  problem. 

{d)  Modifications  to  be  Brought  to  Bear  tipon 
Punishment.  —  What  modifications  should  the 
semi-insanity  of  the  delinquent  bring  to  bear  upon 
the  punishment  merited  by  him  ? 

a.  Diminution  of  Punishme^it. — The  jurists  will 
have  to  see  whether  and  in  what'  proportion  they 
should  diminish  the  punishment,  as  is  done  in  cer- 
tain foreign  countries.  In  this  question  they  will 
take  into  account  the  fact  that  the  principal  objec- 
tions brought  against  this  paring  off  of  punish- 
ment would  be  that  it  would  lose  much  of  its  im- 
portance, when  the  shortening  of  punishment  is  not 
the  only  consequence  of  attenuated  responsibility. 

[364I 


SOCIETY  AND  THE   SEMI-INSANE 

/8.  Special  Penitentiary  Regi77ie. — Should  the 
sentence  pronounced  against  a  semi-insane  indi- 
vidual be  confinement  in  an  ordinary  prison ;  or 
should  there  be  a  special  penitentiary  regime  for 
the  condemned  semi-insane? 

The  Italian  law  permits  the  judge  to  order 
"  that  the  bodily  punishment,  instead  of  being  in- 
flicted in  an  ordinary  prison,  may  be  executed  in 
what  is  known  as  a  casa  di  custodia,  a  sort  of 
guard-house  or  hospital  prison."  Leredu  does  not 
approve  of  this  opinion  and  finds  that  the  Italian 
law  goes  "  a  little  too  far." 

The  majority  of  authors  take  a  stand  against 
the  idea  of  a  special  penitentiary  regime  for  the 
semi-insane.  Professor  Le  Poittevin  says  "  that 
they  should  be  punished  less,  not  by  diminishing 
the  duration,  but  by  diminishing  the  nature  of  the 
punishment  and  by  applying  a  punishment  which 
is  as  long,  but  more  curative  and  educational  and 
better  adapted  to  the  temperament  of  the  semi- 
responsible.  The  penal  reaction,  even  to  the  same 
degree,  would  be  of  a  much  better  quality." 

Charles  Constant  says,  "  The  responsible  will  be 
punished  whatever  may  be  the  psychic  or  mental 
defects  recognized  by  the  physician  in  his  report, 
with  or  without  the  application  of  Article  463;  but 
when  this  report  shows  that  he  is  a  man  whose  de- 
fects can  not  be  cured  simply  by  the  effect  of  indi- 

[36s] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

vidual  imprisonment,  it  would  probably  be  better 
either  not  to  pronounce  the  judgment  or  by  a  spe- 
cial note  to  call  the  attention  of  the  penitentiary 
administration  to  this  delinquent  or  criminal. 
Altho  he  should  be  punished  like  the  rest  on  ac- 
count of  his  responsibility,  nevertheless  he  ought 
to  be  subjected  to  a  special  penitentiary  treatment, 
which  should  be  moral  rather  than  medical." 

Prins  advises  "  to  replace  this  idea  of  shortened 
punishment  as  a  consequence  of  diminished  re- 
sponsibility, by  the  idea  of  a  different  form  of  pun- 
ishment according  to  whether  the  delinquent's 
condition  was  dangerous."  In  connection  with 
this  idea  of  transformation  of  punishment  or  of  a 
special  penitentiary  regime,  there  is  no  better  ex- 
ample to  be  furnished  than  that  of  alcoholics  who 
are  often  curably  semi-insane. 

Thus  Henri  Hayem,  professor  of  belles-lettres y 
said  that  sixty  centiliters  of  wine  were  distributed  to 
the  prisoners  of  Fresnes.  This  was  perhaps  con- 
trary to  what  would  have  been  done  in  a  hospital,^ 
as  from  the  beginning  they  would  suppress  wine. 
Here  is  a  remedy  which  could  be  applied  at  once. 
The  first  undertaking  of  precaution  which  should 
be  taken  against  these  patients  would  consist  not 
only  in  a  radical  suppression  of  all  alcoholic  drinks, 

'I  do  not  believe,  however,  that  alcoholics  should  be  deprived 
of  wine  even  in  a  hospital. 

[366] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE   SEMI-INSANE 

but  also  in  a  special  organization  of  restriction 
and  education  concerning  the  dangers  of  alcohol. 
Ought  not  one  to  take,  in  connection  with  habit- 
ual drinkers,  every  possible  measure  which  might 
have  any  effect  specially  to  rid  our  tribunals  of 
these  delinquents  of  a  peculiar  nature  ?  Already 
certain  foreign  legislatures — that  of  the  canton  of 
St.  Gall  and  that  of  the  state  of  Massachusetts 
especially — have  pointed  out  the  way  which  we 
ought  to  follow.  "  Still  more  definitely,"  Legrain 
adds,  "it  is  in  these  individuals*  that  alcohol,  to 
the  exclusion  of  every  other  factor,  is  the  cause  of 
the  evil  and  of  its  return.  Suppress  alcohol,  or, 
what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  treat  the  habitual 
drinker  according  to  the  methods  whose  terms 
are  well  defined  at  the  present  day,  and  you  will 
forestall  at  one  blow  70  to  75  per  cent,  of  the  re- 
lapses and  will  restore  to  the  life  of  the  world 
many  beings  in  whom  no  defect  will  remain  and 
who  had  become  delinquents  only  by  accident,  or 
criminals  by  reason  of  relapses." 

Therefore,  the  conclusion  that  seems  to  me  cer- 
tain is  that  the  punishment  pronounced  for  the 
semi-insane  man,  whether  it  be  diminished  or  not 
diminished  (that  is  the  business  of  the  law-makers), 
ought,  in  all  steps  taken,  to  be  carried  out  under 
special   conditions,   in   a  special    quarter  of   the 

'This  does  not  include  dipsomaniacs  among  alcoholics. 
[367] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

prison  or  in  a  special  quarter  of  the  hospital,  of 
which  I  will  speak  in  the  following  section,  in 
all  cases  with  special  regulations  in  the  elaboration 
of  which  the  physician  should  be  consulted. 

{e)  Surveillance  and  Treatment  after  Punish- 
ment.—A\.  the  expiration  of  his  punishment,  the 
semi-insane  man  ought  not  to  receive  his  dismissal 
as  would  an  ordinary  man.  The  shortening  and 
lightening  of  the  punishment  which  he  has  under- 
gone would  be  compensated  for  by  a  medical  sur- 
veillance and  obligatory  treatment,  which  should 
last  for  a  certain  time  longer. 

a.  Necessity  of  Legal  Obligation.  —  The  first 
point  to  be  emphasized  is  the  principle  of  this 
obligation.  The  obligation  of  medical  surveillance 
and  treatment  after  the  expiration  of  the  punish- 
ment should  be  incorporated  in  the  law} 

In  order  that  the  measure  should  be  right  and 
effective,  the  subject  ought  to  be  legally  retained 
when  he  has  ceased  to  be  detained. 

Here  is  the  opinion  of  Leredu:  "The  criminal 
of  limited  responsibility  ought  to  be  confined,  at 
the  expiration  of  his  punishment,  whenever  it  is 
thought  necessary,  in  an  asylum  until  he  may  be 

'This  is  independent  of  the  very  serious  and  general  question 
of  the  duties  of  society  toward  the  semi-sick.  See  Babinski : 
"Les  Demi-infirmes,"  Le  Matin,  October,  1905;  Paul  Brousse, 
Mesureur,  Faisans,  ibid.,  October  10,  1905;  Jacques  Dhur: 
"  Pour  les  £paves  de  la  Vie,"  Le  Journal,  October  22,  1905. 

[368] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

declared  cured.  This  is  a  serious  measure,  un- 
doubtedly; but  these  semi-insane,  as  they  call 
them,  are  often  more  dangerous  than  the  wholly 
insane,  more  dangerous  chiefly  because  no  precau- 
tionary measures  are  taken  concerning  them." 
From  the  medical  point  of  view  Gilbert  Ballet  has 
accepted  the  same  outlook  as  Leredu. 

Italian  law,  which  provides  the  casa  di  cusfodia 
for  the  fulfilment  of  the  punishment,  provides  an- 
other for  the  period  which  follows  its  expiration. 
I  have  already  said  that  it  differs  wholly  from  the 
German  system,  which  permits  the  judge  to  order 
a  provisional  guard  and  definite  interdiction  and 
confinement.  As  von  Listz  has  said, "  the  accused 
at  the  expiration  of  his  punishment  is  looked  upon 
as  a  sick  person,  and  measures  of  caution  are  taken 
against  him."  Yes,  we  really  have  a  patient  on 
our  hands,  but  a  patient  who  has  been  and  who 
still  can  be  harmful  to  society.  It  is  therefore 
necessary  to  nurse  him  by  force.  This  is  the  new 
idea  which  we  must  impress  upon  public  opinion 
and  into  the  law. 

To  this  point  of  view  they  object  that  even  re- 
duced, the  punishment,  thus  prolonged  by  con- 
finement, may  positively  be  much  longer  than  if 
the  subject  had  not  received  the  benefit  of  his 
attenuated  responsibility. 

Of  the  responsible  or  of  the  semi-responsible, 
24  [ 369  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Feuilloley,  the  general  advocate  of  the  Court  of 
Appeals,  asks  which  in  reality  will  be  the  most 
punished?  Manifestly  the  semi-demented  will  be 
the  least  culpable.  "  For,"  as  G.  Bonjean  has  justly 
remarked,  "  this  individual  hardly  attaches  any  im- 
portance to  what  may  be  said  in  official  language, 
that  he  is  retained  in  place  of  detained,  and  that  the 
word  asylum  instead  of  prison  is  written  on  the  door 
of  the  institution  where  he  will  be  placed.  That 
he  is  shut  up  in  order  to  be  douched  instead  of  be- 
ing made  to  make  shoes  matters  little.  In  the  one 
case  as  well  as  in  the  other  it  is  privation  of  lib- 
erty. It  will  therefore  be,  I  repeat,  the  least  blame- 
worthy who  will  suffer  the  most.     Is  this  just-f* " 

And  the  insane  man !  He  is  still  less  culpable, 
and  yet  they  deprive  him  of  his  liberty  for  a  much 
longer  time  in  the  asylum,  even  if  he  is  not  a  crim- 
inal.^ Furthermore,  I  believe  that  the  semi-insane 
understands  very  distinctly  the  difference  between 
a  prison  and  an  asylum,  between  a  place  where 
one  IS  punished  ^xid  one  where  one  is  cared  for.  If 

'"Therefore,"  as  Grimanelli  has  said,  "we  have  not  only  the 
insane  who  have  committed  actual  crimes  or  the  delinquent,  but 
the  insane  who  are  recognized  as  dangerous  without  even  having 
committed  a  wrong  act.  Therefore  this  serious  privation  of  lib- 
erty, this  belittling  of  the  human  individuality,  inflicted  by  society 
without  remorse  when  she  has  to  do  with  diseased  people  who 
have  not  seriously  disturbed  the  social  order  of  things.  Conse- 
quently, if  the  objection  had  any  value  society  would  make  such 
an  extension  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  take  count  of  it." 

[370] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

society  has  the  duty  of  caring  for  all  its  sick,  it  has 
the  right  to  care  by  force  for  them  when  they  are 
dangerous/ 

jS.  Special  Institutions  for  Surveillance  and  for 
this  Treatment. — This  medical  surveillance  and 
treatment  of  semi-insane  criminals  after  the  expi- 
ration of  their  punishment  ought  to  be  made,  not 
in  an  ordinary  insane  asylum,  but  in  a  special 
hospital,  or  at  least  in  a  special  quarter  of  the 
asylum. 

This  manner  of  looking  at  the  question  is  that 
of  the  majority  of  speakers  in  the  great  discussion 
of  the  Societe  Generale  des  Prisons,  notably  by 
Malgat,  Gilbert  Ballet,  Garnier,  Colin,  Roubinc- 
vitch,  Grimanelli,  Legras,  Prins,  van  Hamel,  Levy, 
Garraud,  Charpentier. 

It  is  even  the  advice  of  Michelon,  who  does 
not  want  to  admit  attenuated  responsibility,  but 
who  recognizes  that  semi-insane  delinquents  can 
not  be  treated  like  others:  "Since  one  cannot 
think  of  an  attenuated  responsibility  of  which  the 
result  is  a  diminution  of  duration  of  the  punish- 
ment, one  wonders  what  fate  would  be  reserved 
for  the  individuals  attacked  by  semi-insanity.  And 
now  behold  everybody  agrees  on  the  simple  ques- 
tion.   Jurist,  physician,  and  sociologist  are  unani- 

'  See  Dr.  Toulouse :  "  Le  Traitement  du  Crime,"  Le  Journal, 
November  i6,  1906. 

[371] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

mous  in  admitting  this  lack  in  our  repressive  sys- 
tem ;  .  .  .  since  neither  the  asylum  nor  the  prison 
is  suitable  for  our  category  of  criminals,  necessity 
demands  the  creation  of  establishments  which  (as 
Tarde  says)  will  offer  to  society  a  security  which 
the  first  kind  of  institution  would  never  procure 
in  the  same  degree  and  which  the  second  would 
give  at  the  expiration  of  justice." 

There,  however,  have  been  objections  made 
(Voisin,  counselor  to  the  Court  of  Appeals,  and 
Georges  Bonjean,  judge  of  the  Tribunal  of  Paris) 
to  the  special  hospital,  and  certain  ones  prefer  the 
system  of  patro7iage.  "  If  we  wish,"  says  Charles 
Constant,  "  to  administer  moral  treatment  whether 
in  a  special  prison  or  in  an  annex  of  the  prison,  or 
in  the  prison  as  it  actually  exists,  it  is  rather  the 
work  of  your  patrons,  to  which  you  would  devote 
yourselves  with  so  much  interest,  than  the  work 
of  a  director  of  prisons.  There  are  members  of 
these  societies  who,  entering  the  prisons,  have 
admirably  filled  this  role  of  apostles  to  the  unfor- 
tunate individuals  of  weak  moral  status;  these  are 
the  people  who  can  reform  them ;  but  for  that  it  is 
necessary  to  have  a  punishment  of  very  long  dura- 
tion, and  that  would  be  to  run  counter  to  the  very 
careful  work  of  the  patrons  who  are  trying  to  di- 
minish the  duration  of  the  confinement  under  the 
pretext  of  a  diminished  responsibility." 

[372] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

I  do  not  need  to  return  to  the  question  of  the 
scientific  reality  of  attenuated  responsibility;  and 
without  wishing  in  any  way  to  diminish  the  extent 
of  the  very  valuable  services  which  these  patrons 
render,  I  believe  that  they  are  only  serviceable  to 
the  responsible,  but  in  the  same  way  that  the  phy- 
sician is  serviceable  to  the  irresponsible ;  the  semi- 
responsible  need  both  moral  treatment  and  medi- 
cal treatment  in  a  special  house.  "  Our  very 
modest  hope,"  says  Maurice  de  Fleury,  "  is  to  ob- 
tain .  .  .  the  creation  of  hospital  prisons  intended 
for  the  insane  and  for  the  great  neuropathic  crimi- 
nals, mixt  houses  where  the  physician  will  be  called 
into  play — with  the  concurrence  of  the  instructor 
and  the  almoner — this  role  of  moral  adviser  to 
which  we  aspire  and  which  is  really  laid  upon  us." 

y.  How  long  should  this  medical  surveillance 
and  this  treatment  last  and  by  what  procedure 
should  one  dismiss  the  semi-insane  criminal? 

It  would  hardly  be  possible  to  mention  the 
length  of  this  period  of  treatment  in  the  sentence. 
The  physician  is  the  only  judge  of  the  moment 
when  the  subject  is  completely  cured  (which  is  the 
best  that  could  be  hoped  for,  but  which  is  not  al- 
ways possible),  or  at  least  the  moment  when  the  sub- 
ject is  sufficiently  improved  to  have  recovered  the 
entire  responsibility  of  his  action.  It  is  necessary 
to  keep  him  as  long  as  he  is  disposed  to  consider  his 

[373] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

responsibility  diminished  if  he  should  commit  some 
new  misdemeanor.  The  judge  should,  moreover, 
advise  a  minimum  time  or,  better,  a  maximum 
time  beyond  which  the  delinquent  should  not  be 
allowed  to  go  in  freedom,  but  should  be  submitted 
to  a  new  examination  either  by  the  tribunal,  or 
(what  would  be  better)  by  a  special  medical  com- 
mission (such  as  Prins  asks  for). 

On  this  point  I  am  quite  in  accord  with  the 
opinion  of  Michelon.'  He  declares  that  we  should 
"  deliberately  reject  any  fixt  time  in  advance  for 
the  duration  of  the  confinement "  and  rest  upon 
the  opinion  of  Garraud.' 

He  adds  that  it  is  not  enough  simply  to  cure 
the  individual,  but  that  the  cure  must  be  so  radical 
as  to  exclude  all  possibility  of  future  relapse. 
This  is  what  is  done,  it  seems,  in  England  and  in 
Italy.  Finally  one  could,  as  Feuilloley  proposes, 
add  conditional  liberation :  "  the  authority  charged 
with  decreeing  the  lengthening  the  confinement 
could  only  order  the  first  trial  release,  which  would 

*  It  is  quite  true  that  while  starting  from  absolutely  opposed 
points  of  view  one  may  meet  upon  the  same  practical  ground. 
See  also  Saleilles,  loc.  cit.,  p.  262  of  our  chapter  viii, 

'"The  idea  of  the  indefinite  time  might  be  usefully  applied  .  .  . 
when  it  was  a  question  of  carrying  out  measures  of  education  or 
preservation  of  safety  which  by  their  nature  would  be  impossible 
to  determine  in  advance."  "  And  among  these  cases,"  adds  Miche- 
lon,  "  Garraud  ranges  those  who  are  abnormal  or  are  cerebrally 
imperfectly  responsible." 

[374] 


SOCIETY   AND   THE   SEMI-INSANE 

permit  one  to  judge  whether  the  criminal  was  en- 
tirely cured." 

Feuilloley  adds:  "What  I  do  not  want  is  that, 
when  it  is  a  case  of  a  criminally  insane  man, 
the  physician  should  have  the  power  to  give  him 
his  liberty  and  his  papers  of  release  without  an 
examination  by  another  counter-expert  and  with- 
out debate  and  without  any  control  other  than 
that  which  is  purely  nominal  by  the  prefect.  That 
is  why  I  hold  that  there  should  be  another  deci- 
sion of  justice,  for  such  a  decision  would  be  a  very 
great  guaranty  as  much  for  the  individual  himself, 
against  retention  which  might  have  ceased  to  be 
just,  as  for  society  against  premature  liberation." 

It  is  certain  that  all  this  procedure  ought  to  be 
regulated  by  law.  But  I  shall  touch  upon  this 
point  in  the  following  section. 

{/)  The  Authority  which  shall  Pronounce  upon 
Attenuated  Responsibility . — a.  Role  of  the  Physi- 
cian.— The  importance  of  the  physician,  in  the  ap- 
preciation of  insanity  or  semi-insanity  which  is  so 
generally  accepted  to-day,  has  not  always  been 
recognized ;  witness  the  two  following  quotations 
borrowed  from  Trelat: 

"  If  the  law  wishes  to  have  physicians  consulted 
on  questions  of  insanity  it  is  undoubtedly  through 
respect  of  custom,  and  nothing  would  be  more 
gratuitous  than  the  presumption  of  their  special 

[375] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

capacity  in  such  matters.  In  all  good  faith  there 
is  no  man  of  sound  judgment  who  is  more  com- 
petent for  such  a  matter  than  M.  Pinel  or  M.  Es- 
quirol,  and  who  would  not  have  the  advantage 
over  them  of  being  quite  ignorant  of  all  scientific 
knowledge.  Unfortunately,  physicians  have  taken 
this  politeness  of  the  tribunals  quite  seriously,  and 
in  the  examination  of  the  questions  which  they 
have  put  to  them  they  have  too  often  substituted 
the  ambitious  ignorance  of  a  medical  school  for 
the  natural  light  of  reason."  *  "  What  need  have 
we  of  medical  aid  in  determining  mental  disorders? 
If  insanity  is  present  any  man  can  recognize  it  by 
its  extravagances  and  its  rages ;  if  there  is  a  doubt 
about  it,  this  doubt  exists  in  exactly  the  same  way 
for  the  physician." 

This  was  written  between  1826  and  1830.  But 
much  more  recently  an  attorney-general  has  said 
that  "  to  accept  the  plea  of  irresponsibility  for  a 
man  who  had  committed  a  criminal  act  under  the 
irresistible  influence  of  a  suggestion,  would  be  to 
plunge  society  into  an  anarchy  of  unpunishable 
crimes."  And  it  happens  every  day  still,  when  an 
expert  gives  his  diagnosis  as  attenuated  responsi- 
bility, that  the  prosecuting  officer  puts  this  ques- 
tion to  him:  "  Do  you  commit  this  man  to  an  in- 

*  It  was  in  the  Journal  Universel  des  Sciences  Mddicales  that 
this  retrogressive  phrase  was  published. 

[376] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

sane  asylum  ? "  The  physician  hesitates  or  replies : 
"No;  not  in  an  ordinary  insane  asylum  such  as 
exists  to-day."  Then  the  attorney-general  turns 
triumphantly  to  the  jury  and  declares  this  man 
should  be  condemned  without  taking  the  conclu- 
sions of  the  medical  expert  into  consideration. 

Henri  Robert  has  collected  a  series  of  cases  in 
which  the  tribunals  have  paid  no  attention  to  the 
opinion  of  physicians  and  has  called  particular  at- 
tention to  that  of  the  court-martial  called  to  try  a 
soldier  who  had  killed  the  wife  of  an  officer  under 
very  peculiar  and  frightful  circumstances.  A  well- 
known  physician  of  high  rank,  after  examining  the 
accused,  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  the  man  had 
attenuated  responsibility.  Then  the  president 
called  the  chief  warden  of  the  military  prison  and 
asked  him  his  opinion  concerning  the  man's  re- 
sponsibility. "  Colonel,"  replied  he, "  I  believe  the 
man  to  be  responsible."  And  the  soldier  was  con- 
demned to  death. 

Rougier  says  further:  "The  physician  chats  a 
little  with  the  accused  and  judges  of  the  degree  of 
his  responsibility  by  his  replies  and  by  the  infor- 
mation which  he  maybe  able  to  gather  concerning 
his  mode  of  life,  his  past,  his  family,  etc."  "  In 
what  respect  is  the  physician,"  he  asks,  "  outside 
of  his  knowledge  of  physical  or  mental  disease,  es- 
pecially qualified  for  examining  these  different 

[377] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

circumstances?  Why  should  the  magistrate  and 
jurors  turn  over  the  responsibility  to  the  physician 
when  the  latter  only  bases  his  judgment  on  facts 
which  they  themselves  are  just  as  well  able  to  de- 
cide upon  and  which  it  is  our  right  and  our  duty 
to  decide?"  This  sounds  remarkably  like  the 
reasoning  of  1826  to  1830. 

It  is  certain  that,  as  I  have  already  said  in  my 
second  chapter,  the  "two-block"  theory  (of  the 
responsible  and  irresponsible)  was  much  more  con- 
venient. It  must  be  added  that  the  somewhat 
paradoxical  expressions  of  certain  eminent  physi- 
cians have  astonished  their  adversaries  and  have 
given  them  a  basis  for  their  arguments. 

I  have  cited  the  opinion  of  several  physicians 
who  do  not  admit  attenuated  responsibility  when 
it  is  impossible  to  make  ten  or  even  five  reports 
without  having  to  bring  in  this  idea.  Gilbert  Bal- 
let has  gone  further  and  has  said :  "  The  question 
of  responsibility  or  irresponsibility,  as  far  as  I  am 
concerned  as  an  expert  physician,  and  thinking  and 
speaking  only  as  a  physician,  is  absolutely  indif- 
ferent to  me.  //  is  not  indifferent  to  me  as  a 
biologist  or  as  a  psychologist;  but  as  an  expert 
physician  I  consider  that  it  is  on  account  of  a  de- 
plorable habit  that  magistrates  and  judges  put  such 
a  question  to  the  physician,  asking  him  whether 
such  an   accused   person   is  responsible  or  not. 

[378] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

This  question  is  one  which  the  physician  is  not 
quaHfied  to  solve.  It  has  happened  to  me  many 
times  that,  having  testified  in  the  Court  of  Assizes 
and  having  evidently  failed  to  satisfy  the  president 
by  my  purely  medical  replies,  he  has  put  this  ques- 
tion to  me  after  a  certain  amount  of  impatience: 
'Well,  to  come  right  down  to  it,  is  the  accused  re- 
sponsible or  not  ? '  I  have  not  hesitated  to  reply : 
'Mr.  President,  I  am  here  as  a  physician;  I  have 
come  to  show  you  from  the  medical  point  of  view 
what  is  the  matter  with  the  accused  whom  I  have 
been  asked  to  examine ;  it  is  for  you  to  decide 
whether  he  is  responsible  or  irresponsible.  The 
question  which  you  have  asked  me  is  of  a  meta- 
physical or  psychological  order;  it  is  not  a  medi- 
cal question.' " 

It  seems  to  me  that  Gilbert  Ballet*  has  since 
answered  himself.  As  an  expert  how  can  he  help 
exercising  his  knowlege  as  a  biologist  and  psy- 
chologist ?  The  question  of  responsibility  is  by  no 
means  metaphysical ;  but  it  is  psychological ;  con- 
sequently it  is  also  a  medical  question.  Therefore, 
if  magistrates  are  so  willing  to  consult  Gilbert 
Ballet  and  place  so  much  confidence  in  his  expert 
opinion,  it  is  because  they  know  that  our  eminent 

'  It  will  be  interesting  to  read  the  report  which  Gilbert  Ballet 
has  prepared  for  the  Congress  of  French  Neurologists  and  Alien- 
ists (Geneva,  August,  1907)  on  expert  medicolegal  opinions  and 
the  question  of  responsibility. 

[379] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

colleague  is  a  psychologist  and  at  the  same  time  a 
physician.  The  expert's  field  is  not  limited  to 
pointing  out  physical  stigmata,  such  as  the  high- 
arched  palate,  which  has  been  so  much  laughed 
about ;  it  extends  also  to  the  discovery  of  the  psy- 
chic stigmata,  and  it  is  not  sufficient  for  him  to 
confine  his  duties  merely  to  making  a  list  of  symp- 
toms which  he  has  noted ;  he  ought  to  group  them, 
interpret  them,  and  draw  a  diagnosis  from  them. 
This  diagnosis  practically  comes  down  to  the 
question  of  responsibility,  irresponsibility,  or  at- 
tenuated responsibility.  Does  not  this  seem  to  be 
medical  work  of  the  highest  grade,  and  exclusively 
medical  work.? 

Georges  Bonjean  has  made  this  excellent  reply 
to  Gilbert  Ballet:  "Of  what  use  is  the  expert's 
work  if  it  does  not  go  to  the  point  of  drawing  a 
psychic  conclusion?  There  would  be  no  reason 
for  its  existence.  .  .  .  Do  not  overvalue  your  mis- 
sion, for  the  whole  of  science  is  for  the  safety  of 
the  accused  and  for  the  sake  of  justice!"  An- 
other magistrate  has  said  the  same  concerning  the 
putting  of  the  question  of  responsibility  or  of  irre- 
sponsibility— "  the  physician,  as  a  true  scientific 
jurist,  ought  to  reply  affirmatively  or  negatively." 
And  Dr.  Legras  has  said,  "  I  do  not  make  any 
scruples  in  responding  to  this  demand,  because, 
whatever  one  may  say,  the  medical  expert  in  his 

[380] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE  SEMI-INSANE 

conscience  sees  to  the  bottom  of  these  statements 
and  takes  all  the  consequences  of  them,  not  only 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  mental  of  physical 
state,  but  also  from  the  standpoint  of  the  respon- 
sibility of  the  prisoner." 

The  expert  physician  takes  into  consideration 
every  circumstance  and  act  which  he  has  observed, 
and  draws  his  conclusions  from  them,  not  only 
from  the  mental  or  physical  point  of  view,  but  also 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  responsibility  of  the 
accused. 

As  a  fact,  the  attitude  of  the  court  is  more  or 
less  fixt.  It  continues  to  insist  that  physicians 
shall  decide  upon  the  responsibility  or  the  irre- 
sponsibility or  the  attenuated  responsibility  of  the 
accused.* 

If  the  physician  wishes  to  retain  his  role  and 
his  influence  he  must  thoroughly  appreciate  the 
importance  of  the  mission  which  has  been  en- 
trusted to  him,^  and  I  repeat  that  he  must  be  both 
physician  and  psychologist. 

It  can  not  be  admitted  that  all  the  psychological 

'  In  1895  at  the  Congress  of  Alienists  and  Neurologists  M.  Del- 
currou,  first  President  of  the  Court  of  Bordeaux,  in  a  very 
remarkable  conclusion  asked  that  the  number  of  medicolegal  ex- 
perts should  be  increased,  and  wished  to  have  a  neurological  phy- 
sician established  as  prominent  counsel  to  the  criminal  court 
(Maurice  de  P'leury  :  Loc.  cit.,  p.  no,  note). 

'  See  Cruppi :  Loc.  cil.,  p.  300. 

[  3'^i  ] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

causes  (Bonnefoy,  Recorder  at  Paris)  and  moral 
causes  (Rougier)  of  diminished  responsibility  be- 
long rather  to  the  jurist  while  the  physiological 
belong  to  the  physician.  When,  as  Charpentier 
says,  they  ask  by  whom  a  study  of  responsibility 
was  made — "  was  it  by  a  magistrate  or  by  a  physi- 
cian or  by  a  psychologist  ? " — the  answer  should  be, 
By  the  physician,  who  ought  at  the  same  time  to 
be  a  psychologist.  For  the  psychology  which  is 
necessary  to  this  problem  mingles  with  the  physi- 
ology of  the  nerve-centers. 

Paul  Jolly  has  very  aptly  said :  "  I  can  hardly 
understand  limited  responsibility  except  as  a  result 
of  medical  expert  opinion."  In  the  same  way  La- 
borde,  professor  of  the  Faculty  of  Law  of  Mont- 
pellier,  would  not  admit  "  any  extenuating  excuse 
for  diseased  or  degenerate  people  if  the  judge  had 
pronounced  them  such  without  expert  medico- 
legal consultation." 

Therefore,  the  role  of  physician  is  all-important 
and  can  not  be  misconceived.  The  physician 
alone  can  declare  whether  an  accused  person  is 
responsible,  irresponsible,  or  semi-responsible. 

^.  Role  of  the  Judge. — This  means  that  the  phy- 
sician, and  the  physician  only,  may  pronounce  the 
degree  of  responsibility  of  the  subject?  I  do  not 
accept  this.  The  medicolegal  expert  is  indispensa- 
ble as  a  starting-point.     If  the  physician  declares 

[382I 


SOCIETY  AND  THE   SEMI-INSANE 

the  subject  responsible,  the  case  is  clear  on  this 
point  and  without  any  help  of  the  judge ;  but  if  the 
expert  concludes  that  he  is  irresponsible  or  semi- 
responsible,  there  should  be  a  discussion  with  the 
judge  before  pronouncing  this  irresponsibility  com- 
plete or  incomplete. 

This  fact  is  true  even  for  the  insane,  who  belong 
much  more  exclusively  to  the  physician's  realm  than 
do  the  semi-insane.  When  the  discussion  in  the 
French  Senate  was  held  to  reform  the  law  of  1838, 
Dr.  Combes,  who  had  been  appointed  President  of 
the  Council,  wished  to  make  the  commitment  of  the 
insane  purely  and  exclusively  a  medical  question. 
This  was  overruled  in  the  project  of  the  law  (as 
in  Dubief's  project),  as  it  was  an  exaggeration. 

There  is  still  greater  reason,  in  discussing  the 
semi-insane,  that  one  should  not,  as  Michelon  says, 
"  substitute  the  physician  for  the  judge,  and  give, 
as  some  would  like  to  have  it,  the  authority  of 
judgment  to  the  medical  report.  In  this  respect 
we  ought  to  repudiate  the  German  system  which 
under  certain  conditions  subordinates  the  decision 
of  the  judge  to  the  conclusions  of  the  expert." ' 

'  "And  yet,"  continues  Michelon, "  it  must  be  remarked  that  these 
conditions  are  such  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  decision  of  the 
judge  is  most  often  left  absolutely  free.  In  fact,  it  is  first  neces- 
sary that  the  scientific  laws  on  which  the  expert  bases  his  opinion 
should  not  be  contested ;  and  in  the  second  place,  that  the  appli- 
cation of  these  laws  to  the  particular  instance  should  be  rational, 

[2^3] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

The  physician  ought  not  to  become  "master  of 
the  judicial  decision."  ' 

Therefore,  the  role  of  judge,  altho  chronologic- 
ally second  to  that  of  the  physician,  is  none  the 
less  as  necessary  from  a  logical  point  of  view. 

That  being  settled,  "  what  is  the  judicial  author- 
ity which  shall  have  the  right  to  pronounce  upon 
this  question?  This  should  be  none  other  than 
the  tribunal  of  judgment,"  says  Leredu.  ..."  Be- 
fore the  corrective  tribunal  nothing  could  be  more 
simple.  The  judge,  giving  the  reason  for  his 
judgment,  [would  state  the  nature  of  the  limited 
responsibility  which  had  been  pointed  out  to  him, 
for  example,  by  a  medicolegal  report;'  .  .  .  but 
the  most  important  and  delicate  question,  as  far  as 
the  criminal  is  concerned,  comes  before  the  jury. 
Who,  in  the  Court  of  Assizes,  has  the  authority 
to  pronounce  upon  the  question  of  limited  re- 
sponsibility? Shall  it  be  the  jury  or  shall  it  be  the 
court?  As  for  myself,"  concludes  Leredu,  "I 
claim  this  right  for  the  jury.  .  .  .  The  jury,  in  its 

and  finally,  that  the  declarations  of  the  expert  should  not  be  in 
contradiction  to  the  oaths  of  the  testimony  of  the  witnesses  of  the 
accused  "  (Labroquere). 

* "  Along  the  same  lines  Saleilles  says  :  "  It  must  not  be  believed 
that  one  can  always  be  content  with  a  purely  pathological  diagno- 
sis and  refer  back  only  to  the  alienists." 

-"It  is  the  correctional  tribunal  which,  instructed  by  the  expert 
physician  and  knowing  all  the  facts  of  the  case,  will  condemn  (this 
word  is  important)  the  semi-insane  man  to  be  committed  to  a  spe- 
cial asylum  "  (Michelon). 

[384] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

verdict,  will  then  have  to  take  up  the  special  ques- 
tion which  will  be  put  to  it  concerning  the  condi- 
tion of  limited  responsibility.  As  to  the  measure 
to  be  taken,  that  is  for  the  court  to  decide." 

Like  Leredu,  Laborde  would  submit  to  the  jury 
the  question  of  diminished  responsibility,  and  even 
that  of  commitment,  which  Leredu  reserves  to  the 
court. 

On  the  contrary,  Henri  Robert,  "  a  partizan  of 
the  extension  of  the  power  of  the  jury,"  would  like 
to  have  "  the  jury  in  control  of  the  punishment." 
But  as  the  jury,  as  a  rule,  is  "  completely  indiffer- 
ent to  questions  of  responsibility  or  irresponsibil- 
ity," it  is  the  court  which  would  pronounce  upon 
this  point. 

"  There  are  others,"  says  Michelon,  "  and  they 
are  very  numerous,  who  extol  the  fusion  of  the 
jury  and  the  court,  a  system  which  has  already  ex- 
isted in  certain  countries  under  the  name  of  alder- 
manship ;  .  .  .  the  fusion  between  the  two  bodies 
can  exist  in  an  absolute  way,  as  well  for  the  ques- 
tion of  responsibility  as  for  the  fixation  of  the  pun- 
ishment. This  system  would  introduce  an  element 
of  stability  and  intelligence  into  the  institution. 

"  Finally,  certain  persons  propose  to  institute 
alongside  of  the  ordinary  jury  a  second  jury  repre- 
senting conditions  which  must  be  discust  in  their 
scientific   bearing.  .  .  .  One    would    choose   this 

«5  [385I 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

jury  from  people  who,  by  reason  of  their  profes- 
sion or  their  tastes,  would  have  a  thorough  com- 
prehension of  men.  These  would  be,  for  exam- 
ple,//^jKi'zVm;^^,  sociologists^  presidenis  of  charitable 
societies^  and  directors  of  penitentiary  establish- 
ments. Moreover,  this  idea  of  a  technical  jury 
exists  practically  in  Germany  in  the  tribunals  of 
councils  under  the  form  of  medical  boards.  .  .  . 
The  ordinary  jury,  drawn  as  it  is  and  such  as  it 
actually  exists,  would  be  able  to  judge  of  the  im- 
putability,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  relation  of  the 
natural  causes  between  the  crime  and  the  accused. 
The  technical  jury  would  take  up  our  responsibil- 
ity^ or,  more  exactly,  it  would  give  discussions  of 
the  m.ental  conditions  of  the  accused ;  then  it 
would  make  a  choice  of  a  punishment.  It  would 
remain  for  the  court  to  declare  the  duration  of 
punishment.  When  it  was  a  question  of  one  of 
these  cases  which  are  described  as  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility, the  court,  on  receiving  the  opinion  of 
the  technical  jury,  would  pronounce  an  indeter- 
minate length  of  punishment." 

According  to  my  way  of  thinking,  physicians 
only  can  give  an  account  of  the  mental  condi- 
tion of  the  accused.  The  technical  jury,  therefore, 
ought  to  be  exclusively  medical.  Then  the  role  of 
judge  is  too  limited.  But  beyond  this  I  must 
declare  myself  incompetent  on   the  fundamental 

[386] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

element  connected  with  this  particular  question, 
which  belongs  absolutely  to  the  domain  of  juris- 
prudence. 

y.  The  Necessity  of  Including  the  Semi-insane 
and  the  Idea  of  Attenuated  Responsibility  in  the 
Reform  of  the  Law  of  i8j8. — At  all  events,  there 
is  one  point  on  which  everybody  agrees,  and  that 
is  the  necessity  of  modifying  the  existing  laws  or 
of  making  a  new  law  which  would  regulate  in 
France  all  these  questions  concerning  the  semi- 
insane  and  attenuated  responsibility.  The  sim- 
plest thing  to  do  would  be  to  include  the  question 
in  the  reform  of  the  law  of  1838  which  has  every- 
where been  so  urgently  and  yet  so  ineffectually 
demanded.  Every  one  knows  how  great  is  the 
need  of  this.* 

The  law  which  is  still  actually  governing  us  in 
our  treatment  of  the  insane  was  promulgated  by 
Louis-Philippe  at  the  palace  of  Neuillyon  June  30, 
1838,  and  was  completed  by  a  royal  decree  on  De- 
cember 18,  1839.  This  law  was  a  true  step  in 
progress  at  that  period.'  It  was  the  first  legisla- 
tive regulation  replacing  the  purely  administrative 
regulation  of  the  police  ordinance  of  August  9, 


"See  **  Les  Devoirs  et  les  Droits  de  la  Socidtd  vis-k-vis  des 
Ali^nds."     Revue  des  Id^es,   July  15,  1906,  p.  513. 

*See  the  report  of  Larmande  :  Bulletin  de  la  Soci^td  d'fitudes 
Legislatives,  1904,  t.  iii.,  p.  25. 

[387] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

1828.  There  was  an  element  of  "  respect  for  the 
principle  of  individual  responsibility "  in  this  law 
which  "  was  then  in  advance  of  the  majority  of 
legislations  in  Europe,  the  several  hastened  to  imi- 
tate it."  But  it  was  none  the  less  simply  "  a  law 
of  safety"  or  a  "  police  law." 

Since  then  medical  science  and  social  science 
have  made  great  progress,  and  in  our  new  projects 
there  appears  the  idea  of  assistance  and  of  neces- 
sary care  for  the  insane,  as  well  as  the  idea  that 
this  assistance  and  this  care  should  be  obligatory. 
The  idea  of  social  defense  necessarily  implies  to- 
day the  idea  of  assistance,  and  the  assistance  of 
the  insane  is  much  more  obligatory  than  defense 
against  the  insane. 

The  law  of  1838  is  therefore  insufficient  and 
ought  to  be  reformed.  But  in  the  country  where 
for  long  years  the  ideas  on  this  subject  have  been 
cut  and  dried,  the  parliaments  and  academies,  as 
well  as  the  press,  have  vied  with  one  another  in 
eloquence  and  sterility.  The  desired  reforms  have 
been  cast  into  two  projects  (which  are  not  yet 
voted  on),  the  project  of  the  Senate  and  the 
project  of  Dubief. 

Neither  the  law  of  1838  nor  any  of  the  drafts 
of  the  new  law  takes  up  the  subject  of  the  semi- 
insane.  There  is  a  serious  lack  here  which  it  is 
necessary  to  supply. 

[388I 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 


The  new  drafts  of  the  law  take  up  the  question 
of  epileptics,  alcoholics,  idiots,  and  cretins  (which 
the  law  of  1831  absolutely  ignored).  The  follow- 
ing are  the  plans  concerning  them : 


Draft  of  the  Law  of  the  Senate 

Article  i. — The  insane  who 
are  reputed  incurable,  epilep- 
tics, idiots,  and  cretins  may  be 
admitted  into  these  establish- 
ments (public  or  private  asylums 
devoted  exclusively  to  the  treat- 
ment of  mental  alienation)  when 
it  has  not  been  possible  to  pro- 
vide a  place  for  them  in  houses 
of  refuge  or  colonies  or  institu- 
tions especially  set  apart  for 
the  isolation  and  treatment  of 
epileptics  and  for  the  isolation 
and  education  of  idiots  and 
cretins. 


Draft  of  Dubiefs  Law 

Article  2. — Public  asylums 
ought  to  include,  in  the  absence 
of  and  in  the  expectation  of 
special  asylums,  certain  quar- 
ters or  annexes  for  epileptics,  al- 
coholics, idiots,  and  cretins.  .  . 

(These  patients  will  continue 
to  be  admitted  into  the  insane 
asylums  while  awaiting  the 
opening  of  special  asylums.) 

In  the  space  of  ten  years  the 
departments  ought  to  open  spe- 
cial establishments  or  special 
sections  intended  for  the  treat- 
ment and  education  of  all  idi- 
ots or  backward  children,  cre- 
tins, and  epileptics,  and  for  the 
treatment  of  inebriates.  The  es- 
tablishments provided  for  in  the 
preceding  paragraph  should  be 
under  the  surveillance  instituted 
by  the  present  law,  in  a  measure 
determined  by  a  regulation  of 
the  public  administration. 

The  wording  of  Dubiefs  draft  is  infinitely  supe- 
rior to  that  of  the  law  of  the  Senate,  but  it  is 
nevertheless  only  an  improvement,  which  is  still 
very  insufficient,  on  the  law  of  1838.  The  new  law 
for  the  insane  ought  to  contain  a  special  section 
devoted  to  the  semi-insane  and  to  attenuated  re- 

[389] 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

sponsibility,  in  which  all  the  questions  studied  in 
this  book  would  be  taken  up  and  definitely  deter- 
mined bylaw.  This  ought  to  be  the  next  work  of 
the  new  parliament;  I  know  of  nothing  more  seri- 
ous or  more  urgent. 

General   Conclusions 
A  Reply  to  a  Few  Objections 

While  I  was  writing  this  book  the  Annates 
Medico-psychologiques  published  a  study,  which 
was  as  courteous  as  it  was  severe,  by  an  alienist  of 
the  highest  ^standing,  namely.  Dr.  Parant,'  on  my 
article  in  the  Revue  des  deux  Mondes^  "  The  Semi- 
insane  and  the  Semi-responsible." 

The  arguments  of  my  distinguished  conf^xre 
tend  to  do  nothing  less  than  entirely  suppress  the 
very  subject  even  of  my  book.  I  can  not  therefore 
avoid  the  necessity  of  replying  to  him.  This, 
moreover,  affords  me  an  opportunity  of  bringing 
the  doctrine  of  the  book  together  synthetically  and 
of  formulating  its  conclusions. 

In  the  first  place  I  do  not  exaggerate  when  I 
say  that  Dr.  Parant  makes  it  the  object  of  his 
study  to  deny  the  existence  of  semi-insanity  and 
semi-responsibility. 

He  declares  that  my  article  is  open  to  "grave 
objections."     He  fears  that  it  will  only  give  rise 

'Parant:  Annales  Mdd.  Psych.,  May-June,  1906. 
[390I 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

"  to  equivocations  and  to  errors  which  would  lead 
the  public  at  large  to  entertain  false  ideas  concern- 
ing mental  alienation."  He  does  not  believe  "  that 
my  way  of  looking  at  these  things  corresponds  to 
the  reality,"  and  he  does  not  exactly  believe  in 
"  the  general  conception  of  alienation  as  regarded 
in  this  way."  "  The  qualification  of  the  semi- 
insane,  in  addition  to  its  lack  of  exactness,  lays  the 
subject  open,  especially  from  the  medico-legal 
point  of  view,  to  a  great  many  difficulties."  By 
combating  the  two-block  theory  and  creating  a 
third  I  "  increase  the  difficulty  instead  of  reducing 
it."  In  saying  where  responsibility  ends  and  semi- 
responsibility  begins,  and  in  saying  "where  the 
latter  stops  and  gives  place  to  entire  responsibil- 
ity," the  determination  of  the  criterion  is  "  arbi- 
trarily made  and  will  have  no  other  regulation 
than  the  fantastic  judgment  of  one  or  another. 
...  If  we  give  fantasy  free  play  we  run  the  risk  of 
falling  into  that  disastrous  state  of  anarchy  which 
has  hitherto,  under  like  conditions,  always  been 
the  disgrace  and  ruin  of  medico-legal  work  among 
the  insane."  Parant  closes  in  wishing  "  that  the 
manner  in  which  I  propose  to  understand  and 
solve  the  question  of  sanity  and  responsibility  had 
not  so  many  inconveniences  and  dangers  as  it  is 
susceptible  of"  (according  to  his  way  of  thinking). 
It  is  evident  that  if  this  were  true  (and  I  know 
[391I 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

that  other  ahenists  of  no  less  renown  share  Pa- 
rant's  point  of  view)  I  have  only  to  tear  up  my 
manuscript  instead  of  sending  it  to  the  printer. 

But  without  exaggerating,  I  recognize  first  of 
all  that  in  my  article  for  the  Revue,  which  was  in- 
tended for  the  general  public  (as  Parant  has  recog- 
nized), I  did  not  make  a  sufficiently  sharp  and 
scientific  limit  to  the  domain  of  semi-insanity.  I 
did  not  sufficiently  emphasize  the  difference  be- 
tween partial  responsibility  and  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility. I  did  not  point  out  clearly  enough 
that  all  monomaniacs  were  really  insane  and  not 
semi-insane.  I  have  tried  to  do  better  and  to  be 
more  exact  in  this  book.  I  have  recognized  the 
fact  that  the  expression  of  semi-responsibility  is 
vague  and  is  not  as  useful  as  attenuated  responsi- 
bility.* I  will  therefore  make  all  the  concessions 
that  one  pleases  on  the  limits  to  be  assigned  to  the 
block  of  semi-insanity;  that  is  interesting,  but  of 
secondary  importance,  and  I  recognize  that  there 
are  cases  which  are  very  difficult  to  decide.  But 
what  I  want  to  maintain,  in  spite  of  all  objections, 
is  the  existence  between  the  sane  and  insane,  be- 
tween   the   responsible    and   irresponsible,    of    a 

'  Parant  was  right  when  he  said:  "  M.  Grasset  in  one  place  in 
the  article  used  the  term  attenuated  responsibility,  which  is  much 
better  than  that  of  semi-responsibility,  because  it  corresponds 
better  in  every  way  to  the  reality  of  things,  and  he  would  do  bet- 
ter to  keep  to  it." 

[392] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

group  of  semi-insane  individuals  with  attenuated 
responsibility. 

"  Why,"  asks  Parant,  "  should  one  qualify  as 
semi-insane  individuals  those  who,  having  had  one 
or  two  attacks  of  madness,  are  perfectly  cured,  and 
for  the  rest  of  their  lives  present  a  perfectly  satis- 
factory mentality,  or  at  least  one  which  is  fairly 
well-balanced  ?  At  the  time  of  their  attacks  they 
were  insane ;  the  rest  of  the  time  they  were  no 
longer  so."  What?  Some  insane  people  are 
cured  and  no  longer  remain  in  the  class  of  psychic 
inferiors,  and  have  in  no  way  lost  any  of  their  re- 
sponsibility? Parant  recognizes  the  others.  But, 
he  adds,  "  some  others  after  the  attack  show  no 
mark  of  their  derangement."  This  makes  no  dif- 
ference to  me ;  as  long  as  there  are  a  certain  num- 
ber of  subjects  who  are  semi-insane,  they  are 
enough  to  enable  me  to  establish  their  existence 
as  a  group. 

And  the  eccentrics,  the  originals,  the  queer,  the 
neuropaths  of  various  categories,  the  weak,  the 
unbalanced — all  these  patients  of  whom  Parant 
speaks  are  not  they  semi-insane  ?  Parant  recog- 
nizes the  fact  that  they  present  "  material  that  is 
very  difficult  to  interpret."  They  are  "on  the 
border-land  of  madness,"  says  he,  and  he  adds, 
"  the  task  of  the  physician  which  is  often  very  deli- 
cate, but  which  in  the  majority  of  cases  it  is  not 

[393] 


THE   SEMI-INSANE 

impossible  to  fulfil,  consists  in  finding  out  on 
which  side  of  the  frontier  one  should  put  these 
people."  I  beg  here  to  differ  absolutely  from 
Parant ;  I  believe  that  if  one  can  not  decide  be- 
tween these  two  hypotheses,  between  madness  and 
reason,  the  task  of  the  physician  would  often  be 
impossible.  The  proof  of  this  is  that  there  is  an 
enormous  and  increasing  number  of  reports  signed 
by  our  physicians  which  come  to  the  conclusion  of 
attenuated  responsibility.  Parant  then  discusses 
the  intellectual  superiority  (which  he  believes  is 
often  overrated)  of  certain  semi-insane.  He  holds, 
according  to  Foville,  that  Auguste  Comte  was  al- 
ways insane ;  I  am  content  to  refer  him  to  the  last 
book  of  Georges  Dumas.  He  will  not  admit  that 
the  semi-insane  can  have  any  social  value,  and  re- 
fuses them  the  right  of  perpetuating  the  human 
species.  It  is  in  fact  this  very  contrast  of  their  use- 
fulness and  their  social  harmfulness  which  charac- 
terizes the  semi-insane.  It  is  this  fact  especially 
which  keeps  us  from  placing  them  either  with  the 
insane  or  with  the  sane. 

Parant  says  elsewhere:  "There  is  nothing  else 
to  show  but  that  all  the  insane  ought  not  to  be 
committed  to  asylums  and  that  certain  inoffensive 
insane  may  not  be  committed."  Exactly  so,  but 
it  is  the  patients  who  are  not  inoffensive  who 
are  harmful  that  society  ought  to  protect  itself 

[394] 


SOCIETY  AND   THE   SEMI-INSANE 

against — those  who  while  sick  are  not  insane. 
These  are  they  concerning  whom  I  have  written 
this  book  and  who  can  not  be  supprest  either  by  de- 
nying their  existence  or  by  refusing  to  study  them, 

Parant,  however,  admits  attenuated  responsibil- 
ity. He  recognizes  that  certain  nervous  people 
who  are  not  insane  may  sometimes  "be  treated 
less  severely  than  if  they  were  in  a  state  of  perfect 
equilibrium."  I  ask  nothing  more.  Here  is  the 
recognition  of  the  group  of  semi-insane  with  at- 
tenuated responsibility,  and  here  is  the  right  of  ex- 
istence for  my  book. 

Finally,  in  studying  semi-insanity,  I  do  not  feel 
that  I  have  overvalued  the  role  of  medical  expert,  as 
Parant  reproaches  me  with  having  done ;  but  the 
contrary.  The  determination  of  semi-insanity  and 
attenuated  responsibility  will  always  be  a  very 
difficult  question  to  decide  in  every  particular 
case,  and  it  will  always  be  exclusively  medical. 
I  do  not  believe  that,  as  Parant  says,  "  the  isolated 
study  of  actions  and  of  motives  "  and  "  the  degree 
of  psychism  "  are  of  much  importance  to  the  physi- 
cian; I  do  not  believe  that  "  any  one  whosoever  " 
can  be  as  competent  as  a  physician  to  judge  of  the 
quality  and  the  degree  of  psychism.  I  believe,  on 
the  contrary,  that  this  is  the  basis  of  modern  ex- 
pert testimony,  such  as  it  ought  to  be  conceived 
by  the  physician  of  to-day. 

[395I 


THE  SEMI-INSANE 

Without  insisting  further,  however,  I  believe 
that  I  can  say  that  the  objections  of  Parant  may 
have  some  bearing  on  the  Hmitations  and  compo- 
sition of  the  group  of  semi-insane  with  Hmited 
responsibihty.  This  particular  question  may  be 
modified  from  one  year  to  another  by  the  constant 
progress  of  science,  but  the  essential  basis  of  our 
study  remains  intact  and  I  can  lay  down  the  follow- 
ing general  conclusions: 

1.  Between  the  block  of  sane,  responsible  people 
and  the  block  of  irresponsible  insane  there  is  a 
group  of  semi-insane  with  limited  responsibility ; 

2.  These  semi-insane  are  daily  in  the  eye  of  the 
general  public  and  under  lay  observation;  they 
have  also  invaded  the  drama  and  the  literature  of 
all  countries ; 

3.  These  semi-insane  have  definite  clinical 
characteristics  which  enable  us  to  say  that  their 
existence  is  scientifically  proved ; 

4.  These  semi-insane  may  have  great  social  in- 
fluence, as  has  been  proved  by  the  number  of  su- 
perior intellectuals  who  have  shown  the  stigmata 
of  semi-insanity ; 

5.  These  semi-insane  may  also  be,  and  often 
are,  harmful  to  society,  whose  duty  and  also  right 
it  is  to  protect  itself  against  their  misdeeds, 
while  at  the  same  time  helping  them  and  treating 
them; 

[396] 


SOCIETY  AND  THE  SEMI-INSANE 

6.  Physicians  only  are  able  to  pronounce  upon 
the  semi-insanity  of  a  subject; 

7.  When  a  semi-insane  individual  has  committed 
a  misdemeanor  or  crime  he  should  be  both  pun- 
ished and  treated  at  the  same  time ; 

8.  It  is  important  and  urgent  that  the  question 
of  semi-insanity  should  figure  largely  in  the  addi- 
tions proposed  for  the  reformed  law  of  1838. 


THE    END 


f397l 


INDEX 


Aboiilia  of  volition  explain- 
ed, 122 — of  execution  ex- 
plained, 122 

Aboulias  and  paraboulias,  121 
-123  —  description  of,  by 
specialists,  121-123 — law 
of  Ribot  as  to,  122 

Act,  human,   defined,   74-75 

Acute    mania,    definition     of, 

153 

Adventurous  characters,  semi- 
insane   (examples),  90 

Ajax,  an  example  of  the  semi- 
insane,  6  —  as  an  epileptic, 
256 

Alcoholic  delirium,  Lasegue  on, 

53     , 

Alcoholics,  examples  of,  in  Ib- 
sen's works,  8 

Alliances,  matrimonial,  views 
of  specialists  on,  295-299 

Ambitious  persons  and  inven- 
tors (semi-insane),  163 

American,  the,  in  Bourget's 
"Deux  Manages,"  a  semi- 
insane,  28 

Atnorons  obsession,  descrip- 
tion of,  147 

Ampere  as  semi-insane  (per- 
petual motion),  223 

Amur  at  as  an  epileptic,  256 

Anaphrodisia,  concerning,  146 

Androgyny,  concerning,  151 

"  Aoi-no-Ouye,"  a  character  in 
Japanese  tragedy,  1 1 

Argon,  M .,  semi-insane  charac- 
ter of  Moliere,  18 

Aristotle,  view  of,  on  liability 
of  great  men  to  epilepsy, 
256 

Armand,  semi-insane  charac- 
ter of  Bourget,  29 

Arnaud,  definition  of  an  obses- 
sion by,  103  —  examples  of 


moral  insanity  by,  166-167 

—  impulsions  described  by, 
115-117 

Asemia,  description  of,  123 

Asexuals,  concerning,  150 

' '  A  Simple  Heart ' '  by  Flaubert 
described,  23 

Assoucis,  the,  as  semi-insane 
(demi-fou),  234 

Attenuated  responsibility,  con- 
cerning, 327-397 

Auch,  poisoner  of,  regarding 
the,  36 

Au-dessus  des  Forces  Humaines, 
Bjornson's  preface  to,  9-10 

Augmented  instinct  of  nutrition, 
128 

Autoscopic  phenomena,  con- 
cerning, 124-126 

Autoscopy,  cenesthetic,  de- 
scription of,  125  — dissimi- 
lar, description  of,  125  — 
external,  description  of,  125 

—  negative,  description  of, 
126  —  specular,  description 
of,  125 

Babinsky,  conception  of  hys- 
teria try,  57 

Ballet,  (filbert,  on  attenuated 
responsibihty,  342-343  '<  35^' 
357;  368;  378-380  — on 
hypochondria,  126  —  view 
of,  as  to  the  nearness  of 
genius  to  insanity,  259 

Balzac  as  semi-insane  (ambu- 
lation), 229-230  —  as  semi- 
insane  (megalomaniac),  229- 
230  —  semi-insane  charac- 
ters of,  19 

Barboux  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility, 338 

Barine,  Arvede,  view  of,  as  to 
genius,  etc.,  263 


399 


INDEX 


Baudelaire  and  the  wicked 
glazier,  214 — French  intel- 
lectual as  semi-insane  (par- 
esis), 213-215  —  strange 
hereditary  traits  of,  213 

Bayet,  Albert,  on  scientific 
morality,  65 

Beethoven,     eccentricities     of, 

253^254  . 

Benedict,  view  of,  as  to  crim- 
inals, 287 

Bernard  on  the  oddities  of 
Baudelaire,  213 — on  patho- 
logical phenomena,  67-68 

Berlioz  as  semi-insane  (mono- 
mania), 255 

Bernheim,  existence  of  hys- 
teria and  hypnotism  de- 
nied by,  54  —  view  of,  on 
free-will,  61-62 

Bernheim' s  clinical  develop- 
ment of  the  doctrine  of 
gradation,  58  —  doctrine  of 
suggestion,  60 

Bestiality,  concerning,  150 

Bigot  on  morally  insane,  284. 

Biology  and  psychology  of  the 
criminal-born.  282 

Bjornson,  note  on  play  by,  9, 
10  —  on,  31 

"Block,"  single,  theory  of, 
impossible,  76  — two,  the- 
ory of,  im.possible,  76 

Boastful  people  (conceited  or) 
semi-insane  (examples),  90- 
92 

Bonjean,  G.,  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility, 370; 380 

"  Border -land  of  Disease,"  H^ri- 
court  on  the,  52 

Border-lands  of  disease,  dif- 
ficulty of  tracing,  68-69 

Bossuet  as  semi-insane  (neu- 
ropath), 224 

Bourdeleau  as  semi-insane 
(neuropath),  224 

Bourget,  Paul,  semi-insane 
characters  in  his  works,  28 

—  view  of,  on  anecdotes,  1 86 

—  view  of,  as  to  genius,  265 
Bovary,  Madame,  a  degenerate 

character  of  Flaubert,  23 


Bruyerre's  " En  Paix,"  charac- 
ters in,  29 

Buchner,  views  of,  on  free- 
will, 64 

Buffon,  as  semi-insane  (con- 
tortions), 223 

Byron,  Lord,  as  semi-insane, 
249 

Cabanes,  Chronique  Medicale 
of,  concerning,  185  — diag- 
nosis of  Ibsen's  heroes  by, 
8  —  study  of  De  Musset  by, 
218-219 

Cacopardi,  view  of,  as  to  guilt 
of  morally  insane,  284 

Cassar,  Julius,  as  an  epileptic, 
256 

Cardan,  Jerome,  as  semi-insane 
(hallucinations),  245-246 

Cans,  de,  Salomon,  French  in- 
tellectual, as  insane,  222 

Cauviere,  statement  of,  on 
opinions  of  experts  as  to  at- 
tenuated responsibility,  331; 

^339,      . 

Cenesthesia,  descnptionof,  123- 
124 

Cenesthetic  autoscopy,  descrip- 
tion of,  125 — sensations, 
disturbances  of  some,  128 

Cerebral  cortex,  regarding  the, 

42 

Cestan,  observation  of,  44 

Charcot,  Bjornson 's  reference 
to,  10  —  illustration  of  im- 
pulsion from  examples  by, 
1 1 7-1 18  —  view  of,  on  hys- 
teria, 172 

Charles  V  as  an  epileptic,  256 

Charpentier  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility, 382  —  view  of, 
on  semi-insane  prisoners, 
289-290 

Charrin  on  physiological  os- 
cillations, 52 

Chateanbriaiid  as  semi-insane 
(lassitude,  etc.),  223 

Children,  medical  oversight  of, 
300-305 

Chopin,  extreme  nervousness 
of,  251 


[400] 


INDEX 


Chronic  and  criminal  acts, 
view  of  Saleilles  on,  57-58  — 
delusional  insanity,  exam- 
ples of,  in  Ibsen's  works,  8 

Chronique  Medicale  of  Ca- 
banes,  concerning  the,  185 

Claes,  semi-insane  character 
of  Balzac,  19 

Clara,  character  of,  in  Bjorn- 
son's  play,  10 

Claretie,  semi-insane  charac- 
ter of,  27 

Classics,  Greek,  and  the  semi- 
insane,  6 

Clinical  proof  of  the  existence 
of  semi-insanity,  77-179 

Coleridge  as  semi-insane  (opi- 
um), 244 

Colin,  view  of,  regarding  hys- 
teria, 69 

Comar  on  autoscopic  phe- 
nomena, 125 

Comte,  Auguste  (and  Saint-Si- 
mon),   concerning,    192-195 

—  as  semi-insane  and  in- 
sane, 192-193  —  eccentrici- 
ties and  humors  of,  192-193 

—  views  of  Georges  Dumas 
on, 193-194 

Conceited  people  or  boastful, 
semi-insane  (examples),  90- 
92 

Condillac  as  semi-insane  (som- 
nambulist), 222 

Conduct,  moral,  Herbert  Spen- 
cer on,  62,  63 

Confusion,  mental,  definition 
of,  154-155 

Conjugal    love,    definition    of. 

Constant,  Charles,  views  of,  as 
to  attenuated  responsibility, 
332;. 365-  366,  372 

Contagion,  mental,  143-144 

Contentment,  exaggerated,  dis- 
content and, 127 

Contractures,  hysterical,  exam- 
ple of,    lO-I  I 

Corday,  Alichel,  on  "Greatest 
Mental  Misery,"  54  —  part 
creator  of  "demifous,"  5  — 
saying  of  a  character  of,  35 


Cortex,  cerebral,   regarding,  43 

Crebillon  as  semi-insane  (con- 
tortions), 223 

Crime,  embryology  of,  study 
by  Lombroso,  281-283  — 
pathological  anatomy  and 
anthropometry  of,  282 

"Crime  and  Punishment,"  con- 
cerning the  hero  of,  13-14 

Crimes  of  perverts,  some,  288 

Crimes  of  the  semi-insan« 
(semi-insanity  and  criminal- 
ity), 280-291 

Criminal  and  chronic  acts, 
view  of  Saleilles  on,  57-58 

Criminal-born,  biology  and 
psychology  of  the,  282  — 
proportion  of,  to  criminals, 

=^83 

Criminal  insane,  classification 
of,  282 

Criminality,  semi-insane,  280- 
291 

Criminals  by  passion,  classifi- 
cation of,  2 82  —  of  oppor- 
tunity, classification  of,  28a 

Criticism  of  Lombroso 's  ideas, 
284-288 

Crocq,  approval  of  Bernheim 
on  suggestion  by,  59-60 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  hallucina- 
tions of,  247 

Crowd,  classification  of,  by 
Lebon,  138 

Crowds,  heterogeneous,  138  — 
homogeneous,  138 

Cujas.  French  intellectual,  as 
semi-insane  (neuropath),2  24 

Cullcrre,  example  of  btigant 
delusion  by,   165 

Culpability,  responsibility  and 
(physician  and  magistrate), 
316-397 

D'Alembert  as  semi-insana 
(neuropath),  223 

Dallemagne,  view  of,  as  to 
impulsion,  115 

Darwin  as  semi-insane  (neu- 
rasthenia), 250 

D'Aureville,  Barbey,  as  semi- 
insane  (neuropath),  223-234 


t6 


401 


INDEX 


Debove,  conclusion  of,  regard- 
ing Moliere's  M.  Argon,  i8 

De  Caus,  Salomon,  French  in- 
tellectual, as  insane,  222 

De  Chaulncs,  Duchesse,  as 
semi-insane,  231 

De  Chirac  as  semi-insane  (por- 
nographist),  233 

Defects,  human,  Hdricourt  on, 
53~54  —  psychic,  in  the  in- 
tellectually superior,  184- 
258  —  on  attitude  of  Italian 
school,  319,  321,  373  —  on 
the  Dubois  theory,  56  —  on 
hysteria,  70  —  criticism  of 
Lombroso  by,  286 

Degeneracies  properly  so-called, 
160-169 

Degeneracy,  treatise  on,  by 
Morel,  16 

Degenerate, Tennyson's"  Maud" 
as  a,  12 

Degenerates,  inferior,  concern- 
ing, 169,  170  —  lesser,  con- 
cerning, 160-169  —  supe- 
rior, concerning,  156-160 

Degeneration,  mental,  with  ob- 
sessions, examples  of,  in 
Ibsen's  works,  8 

De  Goncourt,  semi-insane  char- 
acter of,  25-26 

De  Lamballe,  Princess,  as  semi- 
insane,  231 

Delbceuf,  non-existence  of  hyp- 
notism affirmed  by,  54 

De  Lespinasse,Mtne.,  as  semi- 
insane,  231 

Delirimn,  alcoholic,  Las^gue 
on,  53  —  dream,  descrip- 
tion of,  113,  114  — dream, 
study  of,  by  R^gis,  53  —  on- 
oric,  study  of,  by  R^gis,  53 

Delphi,  Pythian  oracle  of,  ref- 
erence to,  182 

Delusion,  partial,  description 
of,  I  I  i-i  12 

Delusional  ideas,  concerning, 
126  —  insatiety,  chronic, 
examples  of,  in  Ibsen's 
works,  8 

Delusions,  description  of,  no 
—  grouping  of,  by  special- 


ists, iio-iii  —  reasoning, 
systematized,  concerning, 
161-165 

Dementia,  senile,  examples  of, 
in  Ibsen's  works,  8 

De  Musset,  Alfred,  concerning, 
216-219 

De  Mussel's  encounter  with  his 
double,  216-217 

"Demifous,"  refutation  of  doc- 
trine denying  existence  of 
the,  33-76  —  new  equiva- 
lent for  "abnormal,"  5 

Denial,  ideas  of;  ego  trans- 
formed, 130,  131 

De  Quincey,  Thoinas,  as  semi- 
insane  (neuropath),  243,  244 

Des  Esseintcs,  character  in 
Huysman's  book,  gives  "col- 
or concert,"  228,  229 

De  Slael,  Mme.,  as  semi-insane 
(drug  habitu^),  230 

De  Tours,  view  of,  as  to  the 
nearness  of  genius  to  in- 
sanity, 259,  260 

Diderot  as  semi-insane  (men- 
tal lapses),  230 

Diderot's  view  as  to  the  near- 
ness of  genius  to  insanity, 

259 

Diminislted  instinct  of  nutri- 
tion, 128  —  responsibility 
explained,  36 

Dipsomaniacs,  semi-insane  (ex- 
amples), 89,  90 

Discontent  and  exaggerated 
contentment,  127 

Disease,  the  border-land  of, 
H^ricourt  on,  52  — border- 
lands of.  difficult  to  trace, 
68,  69  —  false  sensations  of 
(hypochondria),  126 

Diseases  in  which  semi-insanity 
may  be  observed,  152-178 

Disequilibration,  definition  of, 
156-160 

Dissimilar  autoscopy,  descrip- 
tion of,  125 

Disturbances  of  sexual  and 
family  psychism,  144-176 

Disturbances,  gregarious,  ex- 
plained,  137  —  of  the  idea 


[402 


INDEX 


of  personality,  132,  133  — 
of  personality  and  of  the  idea 
of  the  ego,  129  —  of  psychic 
acts  relative  to  family  life, 
151 — of  religious  ideas, 
^35>  136  —  of  social  and 
moral  ideas,  133-135  —  of 
the  social  psychism,  133-144 
— of  some  cenesthetic  sensa- 
tions, 128 

Doctrines  which  deny  the  ex- 
istence of  the  "demifous," 
refutation  of,  33-76 

Donizetti  as  semi-insane  (pa- 
retic), 250,  251 

Do7t  Quixote  fetes  in  Spain,  3 
—  in  Richepin's  drama,  3  — 
sanity  of,  in  question,  3  — 
Turgenef  a  critic  of,  13 

Dostoiewsky,  abnormal  charac- 
ters of,  6  —  a  specialist  in 
epilepsy,  16  —  genius  of,  as 
a  psychopathologist,  15  — 
(Russian  novelist),  as  semi- 
insane,  196-198 

Dream  delirium,  description  of, 
II 2-1 14  —  study  of,  by  R^- 

^gis,  53  _     _ 

Dreams,  descriptions  of,  112- 
114  —  views  of  Grasset  on. 

Dreamy  or  polygonal  hallucina- 
tions, 176 

Drosdoff,  Lise  (hysterical) , 
character  of  Dostoiewsky,  16 

Dubicf's  law,  draft  of,  389 

Dubois,  view  of,  on  hysteria, 
56 — view  of,  on  the  neu- 
roses, 69 

Du  Chdtelet,  Marquise,  as  semi- 
insane,  231 

Du  Deffand,  Alarquise,  as  semi- 
insane,  231 

Dumas  fils,  nervousness  of ,  232, 
233  —  Georges,  on  Comte  as 
a  demifous,  193,  194 

Duprat,  views  of,  on  free-will, 

63 

Du  Saule,  Dr.  Legrand,  on  di- 
minished responsibility,  330 

Dutil,  view  of,  on  mental  neu- 
rasthenic conditions,  178 


Eccentrics,  originals  and,  con- 
cerning, 158-160 

Education,  intellectual  (re- 
medial), 300-305  —  moral, 
(remedial),  300-305  — phys- 
ical (remedial),  300-305 

Effcnination,  concerning,  151 

Ego,  physical,  euphoria  of  the, 
127 

Egois-.n,  description  of,  129 

Elizabeth  Kokhlakoff.  a  hyster- 
ical character  ot  Dostoiew- 
sky, 16 

Elsa  of  Wagner  a  victim  of  hal- 
lucinations, 12 

Embryology  of  crime,  study  of, 
by  Lombroso,  281-283 

Emotion,  comparison  of,  with 
fever,  68 

Empedoclcs  as  an  epileptic,  256 

Enfantin,  French  intellectual, 
as  semi-insane  (delusions), 
223 

"En  Paix,"  characters  in 
Bruyerre's  drama  of,  29 

Epilepsy,  concerning,  170,  171 

Epileptic,  Dostoiewsky  as  an, 
196-198  —  moral  and  in- 
sane, classification  of,  282 

Epileptics  and  suicides,  cele- 
brated, 256-258  —  as  a  spe- 
cial study  of  Dostoiewsky, 
16  —  mental  condition  of, 
170,   171 

Erasmus's  Eulogy  of  Madness, 
reference  to,  1S2,  183 

Erotic  and  jealous  people  (semi- 
insane),  165 

Erotomania,  description  of,  146 

Erotomaniacs,  semi-insane  (ex- 
amples), 87,  88 

Erskine,  Lord,  as  semi-insane 
(opium),  244 

Esquirol,  conduct  of  a  semi-in- 
sane patient  of,  80,  81  — 
remarks  of,  on  perverts,  168 
—  theory  of,  as  to  partial 
delusion,  11 1 ,  112 

Euphoria  of  the  physical  ego, 
127 

Evil-doers,  semi-insane  (ex- 
amples), 92,  93 


403] 


INDEX 


Exaggerated  contentment,  dis- 
content and, 127 

Excitement,  maniacal,  exam- 
ples of,  in  Ibsen's  works,  8 

Execution,  aboulia  of,  opinions 
as  to  the,  122,  123 

Exhibitionist,  character  of ,  145 

Existence  of  the  "demifous," 
refutation  of  doctrine  deny- 
ing existence  of,  33-76 

External  autoscopy,  descrip- 
tion of,  125 

"Fa  Dieze,"  Alphonse  Karr's, 

character  in,  26 
Faguct,     observation     of,     on 

nervousness,  184  — view  of, 

as  to  genius,  265 
False    sensations     of     disease 

(hypochondria),  126 
Family  love,  definition  of,  151 
Family  (sexual  and)  psychism, 

disturbance  of,  144-176 
Faustinas,    character     of     De 

Goncourt  (a  somnambulist), 

256 
Fear,     definition     of,     104  — 

morbid,  a  phobia,  104 
Feckner    as    semi-insane    (ob- 
sessions), 249 
Feeble-minded,   imbeciles,   and 

semi-insane  (examples),  82, 

83      . 

Fere,  view  of,  as  to  criminals, 
287 

Ferri,  view  of,  on  responsibil- 
ity, 323 

Fetishism,  definition  of,  148 

Fettilloley  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility, 370,  374,  375 

Fever  and  emotion  compared, 
68  .  .,J 

Filial  love,  definition  of,  151 

Fixt  ideas,  subconscious,  or 
polygonals,  174-176 

Flaubert  semi-insane  (epilep- 
tic), 209-213  —  semi-insane 
characters  in  his  works,  22 

Flaubert's  novels  written  under 
color-infiuence,  212 

Fleury,  De,  view  of,  on  Dubois 
theory,  56  —  on  hysteria,  70 


Folet  of  Lille,  conclusion  of,  on 

Moliere's  M.  Argon,  18 
Fouillee,    quotation    of,    from 

Jean  Weber,  64 
France,   Anatole,  reference    to 

view  of,  183 
Fraternal    love,    definition  of, 

Frederick    II.  as    semi-insane 

249 
Free-will,     non-existence     of, 

declared   by   Bernheim,    6r, 

62  —  views  of  Buchner  on, 
64  —  views   of   Duprat   on, 

63  —  views  of  Le  Dantec 
on,  63  —  views  of  Schopen- 
hauer on,  63 

French  intellectual  superiors, 
semi-insane,  201-234  —  law 
against  attenuated  responsi- 
bility, 351  —  school,  views 
of,   on   responsibility,   320- 

323 
' '  Freres  Karamazoff , ' '  a  charac- 
ter   of    Dostoiewsky     (hys- 
terics) in,  16 
Fries,    hallucinations   of,    250 
Frigidity,  description  of,  146 
Functions,  psychic,    and    psy- 
chic acts  in  general   (tabu- 
lar), 99 
Fur  sac,    R.    de,  delusions    as 
grouped  by,  no 

Garafalo,  view  of,  on  attenu- 
ated responsibility,  320 

Carchine,  Russian  novelist,  as 
semi-insane  (morbid),  201 
—  the  "painter  of  despair," 

Gargon  on  attenuated  responsi- 
bility, 358-361 

Gamier,  Paul,  on  attenuated 
responsibility,  357,  358 

Garraud  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility, 329,  374 

Gelineau,  references  made  to 
works  of,  185 

Gelineau' s  group  of  notable 
epileptics,  256,  257 

General  sensibility,  troubles  of, 
123-128 


404] 


INDEX 


Generalities  regarding  social 
value  of  the  semi-insane, 
181-184 

George  Sand,  description  by, 
of  an  adventure  of  De  Mus- 
set's,  216,  217 

Germinal,  Zola's  description  of 
a  semi-insane  crowd  in,  25 

Chil,  Rene,  on  "the colors  of  the 
vowels,"  228 

Chompatchi,  Shirai,  hero  in 
Japanese  tragedy,  concern- 
ing, 11,  12 

Gill,  Andre,  French  intellec- 
tual, as  insane,  221 

Glatigny,  Albert,  as  semi-in- 
sane (metatopomaniac),  233, 

234 

Goblot,  view  of,  as  to  human 
responsibility,  310,  311 

Goethe  as  semi-insane  (hypo- 
chondria), 248 

Gogol,  Russian  novelist,  as 
semi-insane,  195,  196 

Goncourts,  the,  characteris- 
tics of,  226,  227 

Gorky  as  semi-insane  (wan- 
derer), 201  —  semi-insane 
characters  of,  1 7 

Grandct,  semi-insane  charac- 
ter of  Balzac,  19 

Grandeur,  ideas  of  (optimism) , 
130 

Grasset,  view  of,  on  the  cere- 
bral life,  45  —  view  of,  on 
dreams,  113 

Greek  classics  and  the  semi- 
insane,  6 

Gregarious  disturbances  ex- 
plained, 137 

Grcgcrs,  Doumic's  portrayal  of, 
in  Ibsen's  "Wild  Duck,"  8,  9 

Gritnanelli  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility, 358,  361 

Gringoires,  the,  as  semi-insane 
(demifous),  234 

Gromov,  character  of  Tchekkof 
(hallucination),  17 

Growth,  physical,  periods  of, 
300-302 

Guicysse,  conclusion  of,  on 
Moli^re's  M.  Argon,  18,  19 


Guislain  on  the  aboulia  of 
execution,  123  —  view  of,  as 
to  semi-insane,  82 

Habits  of  the  obsessed,  109 

Haller  as  semi-insane  (hal- 
lucinations), 245 

Hallucinations,  dreamy  or  poly- 
gonal, 176  —  illusions  and, 
defined,  100-102 

Hamlet  as  a  semi-insane,  7 

Hannfulness  of  the  semi-in- 
sane, 273-280 

Hartcnbcrg,  non-existence  of 
hypnotism  affirmed  by,  54 

Hauptmann,  Gcrhart,  abnormal 
characters  of,  6 

Haycm,  Henry,  on  supply  of 
wine  to  prisoners,  366 

Helenc,  semi-insane  character 
of  Bourget,  28 

Hendeln  as  an  epileptic,  256 

Henriot,  G.,  characters  of,  in 
"  I'Enquete,"  29 

Hercules  as  an  epileptic,    256 

—  the  fury  of,  6 
Hericourt  on  the  "Border-land 

of    disease,"    52  —  on    hu- 
man defects,  53,  54 
Hermaphroditism,     psychosex- 

ual,  concerning,  150,  151 
Heterogeneous  crowds,  138 
Heterosexuals,  concerning,  150 
Hjalmar's      house,       Sarcey's 
view   of,   in  Ibsen's    "  Wild 
Duck,"  9 
Hoffman  p.s  semi-insane,   238, 

239 
Homogeneous  crowds,  138 
Homosexuality,  concerning,  151 
Homosexuals,  concerning,    150 
Horror,  sexual,  concerning,  146 
Hugo,   Victor,    as    semi-insane 

(egoist),   231  — visit  of,  to 

Villemain,  203,  204 
Hulot,     Baron,        semi-insane 

character  of  Balzac,  19 
Human  act  (a),  defined,  74,  75 

—  defects,  Hericourt  on,  53, 

54 
Humanity,   division  of,   as  to 
sanity  and  semi-insanity,  50 


405] 


INDEX 


Huysman,  semi-insane  charac- 
ter in  book  by,  228,  229 

Hygienic  rules  for  nervous 
people,  306-308 

Hyperesthesia,  sexual,  147 

Hyperphobism,  definition  of, 
105 

Hypnotism,  existence  of,  de- 
nied by  Bernheim,  Delboeuf, 
and  Hartenberg,  54 

Hypochondria,  concerning,  126 

—  wa/or  explained,  126 
Hypo-disturbances,       concern- 
ing, 146 

Hypominia,      description     of, 

123 
Hypophilics    among     diseased 

characteristics,  145 
Hypophilism,  concerning,    146 
Hypophobism,  a  lack  of   fear, 

Hyposemia,  description  of,  123 
Hysteria    and  hypnotism,  ex- 
istence  of,  denied  by  Bern- 
heim, 54 
Hysteria,  concerning,   1 71-176 

—  Babinsky's  conception  of, 
57 — mental  state  in,  173, 
174  —  view  of  Colin  con- 
cerning, 69  —  view  of  Du- 
bois regarding,  56  —  view 
of  Pierre  Janet  on,  72 

Hysterical  contractures,  ex- 
ample of,  10,   II 


Ibsen,  abnormal  characters  of, 
6 

Ideas,  delusional,  concerning, 
126  —  fixt,  subconscious  or 
polygonals,  174-176  —  of 
denial  or  partial  or  total 
transformation  of  the  ego, 
130,  131 — of  persecution 
and  defense,  131 

Ideative  obsessions,  descrip- 
tion of,  108-1 10 

Illusions  and  hallucinations 
defined,    100 

Imbeciles  (and  feeble-minded) 
semi-insane,  82,  83  —  con- 
cerning, 169,  170 

Impotence,  description  of,  146 

[406 


Impulsion,  example  of,  from 
Charcot,  117,  1x8  —  exam- 
ples of,  from  Pitres,  119  — 
view  of  Dallemagne  as  to, 

Impulsions,  definitions  of,  114- 
121  — description  of,  by 
Amaud,  1 1 5-11 7  —  descrip- 
tion of,  by  R<?gis,  117  — 
morbid,  views  of  R€gis  and 
Pitres  on,  114 

Inert,  the,  semi-insane,  con- 
cerning, 95 

Inferior  degenerates,  concern- 
ing, 169,  170 

Insane,  criminal,  classification 
of,  282  —  moral  and  epilep- 
tic, classification  of,  282  — 
(semi-)  proof  of  existence, 
77-179  —  (semi-)  medical 
study  of,  77-179 

Insanity,  delusional  (chronic), 
examples  of,  in  Ibsen's 
works,  8  —  in  Russia,  Or- 
chansky's  view  of,  13  — 
moral,  first  discussion  of,  16 

Instinct  of  nutrition,  disturb- 
ances of,  128 

Intellectual  education  (reme- 
dial), 300-305  —  superiority 
as  related  to  the  psycho- 
neurosis,  258-269  —  supe- 
riors, French,  semi-insane, 
201-234 

Intellectually  superior,  psychic 
defects  in  the,  184-258 

Inventors  (ambitious  people 
and),  semi-insane,  163 

Inversion,   sexual,  concerning, 

Italian  school,  view  of  De 
Fleury  on,  319,  320  —  views 
of,  on  responsibility,  319, 
320 

Ivan  Karamazoff,  a  character 
of  Dostoiewsky  (hallucina- 
tions), 16,  17 


Janet,  description  and  classifi- 
cation of  aboulias  by,  121, 
122  —  description  of  psy- 
chasthenia    by,    176-178  — 


INDEX 


examples  of  fixt  ideas  by, 
175  —  on  hysteria,  72 

Japanese  theater-plays,  study 
of,  by  Geyer,  1 1 

Jealous  people  (erotic  and), 
semi-insane,  165  — patients, 
semi-insane  (examples),  88, 
89 

Jean  Mornas,  character  of 
Claretie,  27 

Jolly,  Judge,  view  of,  on  attenu- 
ated     responsibility,      332, 

Joly,  Henri,  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibihty,  352,  353  —  ref- 
erences made  to  works  of, 
185  —  Jules,  on  attenuated 
responsibihty,  353,  354  — 
Paul,  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility, 382 

Julie,  in  Bourget's  "L'fitape," 
a  semi-insane,  28 

Julius  CcBsar  as  an  epileptic, 
256 


Kahn  on  attenuated  responsi- 
bility, 349 

"Karamazoff,  Freres,"  a  char- 
acter in  Dostoiewsky's  (hys- 
terical), 16  —  Ivan,  a 
character  of  Dostoiewsky 
(hallucinations),  16,  17 

Karr,  Alphonse,  semi-insane 
characters  of,  26 

Kleptomaniacs,  semi-insane 
(examples),  93,  94 

Kokhlakoff,  Elizabeth,  a  charac- 
ter of  Dostoiewsky  (hyster- 
ical), 16 

Krafft-Ebing,  view  of,  on  mor- 
ally insane,  284 

Kundry  of  Wagner,  personality 
of,  12 

"  La  Bite  Huntaine,"  charac- 
ter of  Zola  (homicide),  24 

Laborde  on  attenuated  respon- 
sibility, 385 

Lacassagne  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility, 362 

Lady  Macbeth' s  "hysterical 
obsession,"  7 


Lagrange  as  semi-insane  (re- 
pulsion, etc.),  223 

Lamballe,  De,  Princesse,  as 
semi-insane,  231 

Lanson,  quotation  from,  on 
biography,  185 

La  Renee,  degenerate  charac- 
ter of  Zola,  24 

Lasegue  on  alcoholic  delirium, 
53  —  on  progressive  syste- 
matized psychoses,  155,  156 

"U Assom-^noir,"  Zola's  descrip- 
tion of  delirium  in,  24,  25 

Laurent,  view  of,  on  criminals, 
287 

Lauiriere,  view  of,  as  to  genius, 
267 

Law,  French,  against  attenu- 
ated responsibility,  351  — 
moral,  views  of  Weber  on, 
64  —  semi-insane   and    the, 

309-397 

Le  Bon,  classification  of  crowds 
by,  138 

Le  Dantec,  views  of,  on  free- 
will, 63 

Ledro  on  attenuated  responsi- 
bihty, 354,  355 

Lefebnre  on  De  Musset's  super- 
sensibility,  217,  218 

Le  grain,  reply  of,  to  question 
on  attenuated  responsibility, 
Z:^'^^  332,  339  —  view  of, 
on  diminished  responsibility, 
328,  329,  367 

Legras,  Dr.,  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibihty,   344,    345,    380 

Lejonne,  observation  of,  44 

"  L'Enquete,"  characters  in 
drama  of  Roger,  29 

Le  Poittevin  on  attenuated 
responsibihty,  355,  356,  365 

Leredu  on  attenuated  respon- 
sibility, 345,  346,  352,  368, 
369.  384  —  report  of,  on 
expert  opinion  concerning 
attenuated       responsibility, 

2,Zo,  331 
Lesser  degenerates,  concerning, 

160-169 
Lise  Drosdoff,   a   character  of 

Dostoiewsky   (hysteric),    16 

[407] 


INDEX 


UIsle-Adam,  Villiers  du,  as 
semi-insane  (neuropath),  223 

Literature,  the  semi-insane  in, 
3-32 

Litigant  delusions,  examples 
by  Regis,  164,  165 

Litigants  (semi-insane),  163, 
164 

"Little  Violet  of  Eddo,"  re- 
garding the  hero  of,  11,  12 

Living  beings,  phobias  of,  108 

Livius  Drusus  as  an  epileptic, 
256 

Lomhroso,  concerning  refer- 
ences made  to  works  of,  184, 
185  —  on  the  oddities  of 
Baudelaire,  213  —  on  the 
relations  of  the  criminal- 
bom  to  moral  insanity,  280- 
284 

Lombroso's  group  of  famous 
epileptics,  256  —  ideas  crit- 
icized, 284-288  —  list  of 
suicides  (great  men),  257 
—  view  as  to  the  nearness 
of  genius  to  insanity,  260  — 
views  on  genius  combated 
by  other  specialists,  260,  261 

Loygue,  Gaston,  on  character 
of  Raskolnikoff,  14,  15  — 
on  Dostoiewsky  as  semi-in- 
insane,  197,  198 

Lourie,  Ossip,  on  Gogol  and 
others  as  semi-insane,  195, 
196  —  on  Russian  novelists. 

Love,  definition  of,  151  —  con- 
jugal, definition  of,  151  — 
family,  definition  of,  151  — 
filial,  definition  of,  151  — 
fraternal,  definition  of,    151 

Lucid  mania,  patients  with, 
semi-insane  (examples),  95, 
96 


Macbeth  as  an  epileptic,  256 
Magistrate      (physician    and) , 

316-397 
Magnan,  definition  of  an  obses- 
sion   iDy,    103  —  interpreta- 
tion  of     degeneracy,    15  — 
▼iew  of,  as  to  criminals,  287 

[408 


"Magnetick    Lady,"    The,     of 

Ben  Jonson,  7 
Making  of  a  citizen,  the,  300- 

305 

Malot,  Hector,  semi -insane 
character  of,  26,  27 

Malherbe  as  a  semi-insane,  224 

Malibran,  Mme.,  as  an  epilep- 
tic, 256 

Mallarme  on  "vowel  colors," 
228 

Man,  nervous  phenomena  of, 
concerning  the,  67 

Mania,  acute,  definition  of, 
153  —  lucid  (patients with), 
semi-insane  (examples),  95, 
96  —  systematized  post- 
maniacal  delusions,  153 

Maniacal  excitement,  exam- 
ples of,  in  Ibsen's  works,   8 

Manzoni  as  a  victim  of  melan- 
cholia, 247 

Marce,  description  of  a  degen- 
erate by,  161 

Marriage,  medical  supervision 
of,  295-299 

Martin,  Etienne,  on  attenuated 
responsibility,  362 

Masochist,  definition  of  a,  148 

Maternal  (paternal  or)  love, 
definition  of,  151 

Matrimonial  alliances,  views 
of  specialists  on,  295-299 

''Maud,"  in  Tennyson's  poem, 
character  of,  1 2 

Maupassant,  Guy  de,  as  insane, 
201-203  —  double  sight  of, 
202,  203 

Maurice  de  Fleury  on  the  Du- 
bois theory,  56  —  on  hys- 
teria, 70 

Mechanism,    nervous,  discust, 

38 

Medical  idea  of  responsibility, 
310-327  — oversight  of  chil- 
dren, 300-305  —  study  of 
semi-insane,  77-179 — su- 
pervision of  marriage,  295- 
299 

Melancholia,  description  of, 
153.  154  —  examples  of,  in 
Ibsen's  works,  8 


INDEX 


"Memories  of  a  Dead-house," 

Mental  confusion,  definition  of, 
154,  155  — contagion,  143, 
144  —  degeneration,  vari- 
ous forms  exemplified  in 
Ibsen's  works,  8  —  degen- 
erations with  obsessions,  ex- 
amples in  Ibsen's  works,   8 

—  misery,     Corday    on,     54 

—  state  in  hysteria,  173,  174 
Merichiis  the  Syracusan  as  an 

epileptic,  256 
Michelon,  view  of,  on  attenu- 
ated responsibility,  329, 333- 
335.  341,  342,  358,  359,   371, 
374.  383-386 
Misdemeanors    of    the     semi- 
insane  as  free  men,  275-280 
Misery,  mental,  Corday  on,  54 
Mohammed  as  an  epileptic,  256 
"Aloi  et  I'Autre,  the   hero  of, 

a  "demifous,"  27 
Moliere,    abnormal  characters 
of,  5  —  as  an  epileptic,  256 

—  as  semi-insane  (hypo- 
chondriac and  melancholic), 
222 

Monomaniacs,  semi-insane  (ex- 
amples), 84-87 

Monstrosities,  concerning,  169, 
170 

Montesquieu  as  semi-insane 
(nervousness),  222 

Montycl,  De,  opinion  of,  on 
perverts,  168,  169 

Moral  and  epileptic  insane, 
classification  of,  282  —  con- 
duct, Herbert  Spencer  on, 
62,  63  —  education  (reme- 
dial), 300-305  — exhibition- 
ism, definition  of,  147  —  in- 
sanity, first  discussion  of,  16 
— law,  views  of  Weber  on,  64 

—  (social  and),  ideas,  dis- 
turbances of,  133-135 

Morality,  scientific,  Bayet  on, 

65 

Morally  insane,  view  of  Bigot 
on,  284  —  view  of  Cacopar- 
do  as  to  guilt  of,  284 

Morbid  fear  a  phobia,   104  — 


impulsions,  view  of  R^gis 
and  Pitres  on,  114  —  timid- 
ity, description  of,  129 

M  orcein' s  classification  of 
social  and  moral  idea  dis- 
turbances, 133-135 

Morel,  definition  of  an  obses- 
sion by,  102  —  reference  to, 
as  an  authority  on  perverts, 
168  —  treatise  on  degener- 
acy by,  16 

Morel's  interpretations  of 
hereditary  insanity,  15 

Mornas,  Jean,  character  of, 
in  book  by  Claretie,  27 

Mortsauf,  M.  de,  semi-insane 
character  of  Balzac,  19,  20 

Mozart  as  an  epileptic,  256  — 
precocity  and  nervousness 
of,  252,  253 

Muichkine,  Prince,  a  charac- 
ter of  Dostoiewsky  (epilep- 
tic), 16 

Munk,  opinion  of,  on  psychic 
centers,  38 

Munkaczy,  painter,  as  insane, 
247 

Musicians,  great,  as  semi-in- 
sane, 250-255 

Musset,  De,  Alfred,  as  semi- 
insane  (drug  habitud),  216 
—  poem  of,  written  during 
hallucination,  216 

Mystic  and  political  delusions 
(semi-insane),  165 


Napoleon  as  an  epileptic,  256 
—  as  a  semi-insane,  224 

Nastia,    character    in    one    of 
Gorky's  books,  17,  18 

Natasha,  character  in  one  of 
Gorky's  books,  18 

Necrophilia,  concerning,  150 

Negative    autoscopy,    descrip- 
tion of,  126 

Nelly,  a  character  of  Dostoi- 
ewsky (epileptic),  16 

Nerval,  De,  French  intellectual, 
hallucinations  of,    207  — 
French  intellectual  as  semi- 
insane     (neurosis),     207  — 


[409 


INDEX 


takes  a  lobster  for  a  walk, 
208 
Nervous  mechanism  discust, 
38  —  people,  hygienic  rules 
for,  306-308  —  phenomena 
of  man,  concerning  the,  67 

—  system    the     physician's 
concern,  313-316 

Neurasthenia  (and  psychas- 
thenia),  176-178  —  exam- 
ples of,  in  Ibsen's  works,  8 

Neuroses,  xiev:  of  Dubois  on,  69 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  as  an  epilep- 
tic, 256  —  asinsane.  246,  247 

Nietzsche  as  semi-insane  (de- 
mented), 235,  236 

Nietzsche's  view  of  Wagner,  251 

"No,"  Japanese  tragedy,  con- 
cerning, 1 1 

Nodicr,  Charles,  as  semi-insane 
(neurasthenia),  232 

Nordau,   quotation  from,    183 

—  references  made  to  works 
of,  185 

Nordau' s  view  of  Wagner,  252 

Novelists,  Russian  contem- 
porary, as  semi-insane,  195- 
201  —  views  of  Ossip  Lou- 
ri^  on,  13 

Nutrition,  instinct  of,  aug- 
mented, diminished,  or  per- 
verted, 128  —  instinct  of, 
disturbances  of  the,  128 

Nymphomania,  description  of, 

147 
Nymphontamac,    character    of 

^'  145         . 
Nymphomaniacs,    satyriasists, 
and  semi-insane  (examples), 
83.  84 

Objects,  phobias  of,  107 
Obsessed,  habits  of  the,  109 
Obsession,    amorous,     descrip- 
tion  of,    147  —  an,   defined 
by    Amaud,     103  —  defini- 
tion of,  by  specialists,  102- 
104 
Obsessions,  classification  of,  by 
R6gis,    109  —  definition  of, 
102-109   —   ideative,       de- 
scription of,  loS-iio 


O'Connell  as  semi-insane  (par- 
esis), 247 

One  "block,"  the  theory  of,  50 

Onoric  delirium,  study  of,  by 
R^gis,  53 

Opportunity,  criminals  of,  clas- 
sification, 282,  283 

Optimism,  ideas  of  grandeur, 
130  —  Seglas  on,  130 

Oracle  of  Delphi,  Pythian, 
reference  to,  182 

Orchansky  on  insanity  in  Rus- 
sia, 13 

Orestes,  "toxic  delirium"  of,  6 

' '  Original  character , "  exam- 
ple of  an,  84 

Originals  and  eccentrics,  con- 
cerning, 158-160 

05«7/a/toM5, physiological, Char- 
rin  on,  52 

Overwork  at  school  (remedial), 
302-304 

Paganini  as  an  epileptic,  256 
Paisiello  as  semi-insane,  249 
Paladin,    Sar,   as   semi-insane 

(neuropath),  224 
Para  disturbances,  concerning, 

147 
Paraboulias      (aboulias    and), 

121-123  —  dafinition  of ,  122 
Parant,  Dr.,  objections  of,  to 

this  book,  with  reply,  390- 

397 

Paraphilics  among  character- 
istics of  diseased  people,  145 

Paraphobistn,  definition  of,  105 

Parise,  Reveille,  view  of,  on 
genius,  262 

Parrot,  opinion  of,  on  semi- 
insanity,  54 

Partial  delusion,  description  of, 
III,  112 

Pascal  as  an  epileptic,  256  — 
eccentricities  and  humors 
of,  1 87-1 9 1  —  as  a  juvenile 
prodigy,  187 — Socrates  and, 
as  semi-insane,  186-192 

Pascal's  skull,  peculiarities  of, 
191 — vision  and  use  of  an 
amulet,  190 

Passivism,  definition  of,  148 


410] 


INDEX 


Passivity,  definition  of,  148 

Paternal  OT  maternal  love,  defi- 
nition of,  151 

Pathological  phenomena,  views 
of  Bernard  on,  67,  68 

Pathophilia,  definition  of,  150 

Patients,  jealous,  semi-insane 
(examples),  88,  89 

Paul,  Saint,  as  an  epileptic, 
256 

"Persecuted"  persecutors  (de- 
lusions), 161-165  —  (semi- 
insane),  162,  163 

Persecution  and  defense,  ideas 
of,  131 

Persecutors  ("persecuted  ") 
(delusions),  161-165 

Personality,  disturbances  of, 
129  —  idea,  disturbances  of, 
132,  133 

Perversions,  sexual,  concern- 
ing, 147 

Perverted  instinct  of  nutrition, 
128 

Perverts,  opinions  of  noted 
specialists  concerning,  167- 
169  —  some  crimes  of,   288 

Peter  the  Great  (Pierre  le  Grand) 
as  an  epileptic,  256 

Petrarch  as  an  epileptic,  256 

Phedre,  love  of  (character  of 
Molidre),  19 

Phenomena,  autoscopic,  con- 
cerning, 124-126 

Phobia  a  morbid  fear,  104 

Phobias  of  living  beings,  108 
—  of  objects,  107  —  of 
place,  107,  108  —  system- 
atized, division  of,  by  R^gis, 
107,  108 

Phobophilia,  definition  of,  149, 

Physical  education  (remedial), 
300-305  —  ego,  euphoria  of 
the,  127 — growth,  periods 
of.  300-302 

Physician      and      magistrate, 

316-397 
Physicians    and    the    nervous 

system,  313-316 
Physiological  oscillations, 

Charrin  on,  53 


Pierre  and  Olivier,  semi-insane 
characters  of  Bourget,  28 

Pierre  Laffitte  on  scientific 
phenomena,  63,  64 

Pinel,  experiences  of,  with 
semi-insane,  80  —  reference 
to,  as  authority  on  perverts, 
168  —  view  of,  on  moral  in- 
sanity, 284 

Pitres,  definition  of  an  obses- 
sion by,  103  —  examples 
of  impulsion  from,  119  — 
opinion  of,  on  psychic  cen- 
ters, 38  —  view  of,  on  mor- 
bid impulsions,  114 

Place,  phobias  of,  107,  loS 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  as  semi-in- 
sane, 239,  240  —  poem  by, 
240  —  writings  of,  concern- 
ing, 240-243 

Political  (mystic  and)  delu- 
sions (semi-insane),  165 

Po/3'gona/ hallucinations,  176 

Polygonals,  subconscious  fixt 
ideas  of,  174-176 

Pomialofsky,  Russian  novelist, 
as  semi-insane  dipsomaniac, 
201 

Pons,  semi-insane  character  of 
Balzac,  19 

Priapism,  description  of,  147    • 

Primary  psychopathic  states 
(tabular  exhibit),  154,  155 

Prince  Muichkine.,  a  character 
of  Dostoiewsky  (epileptic), 
16 

Prins  on  attenuated  responsi- 
bility, 358,  364,  366 

Prisoners,  semi-insane,  view  of 
Charpentier  on,  289,  290 

Problem  of  deciding  as  to  san- 
ity, 38  .      ^ 

Progressive  systematized  psy- 
choses, 155,  156 

Prophylaxis,  establishment  of, 
292-308 

Psychasthcnia  (neurasthenia 
and),  176-178 

Psychic  acts,  division  of,  133 
—  acts  relative  to  the  sexual 
life,  disturbances  of,  145  — 
centers  as  organs,  39  —  de- 


[411] 


INDEX 


fects  in  the  intellectually 
superior,  184-258  —  func- 
tions and  psychic  acts  in 
general  (tabular),  99  — 
meaning  of,  48 

Psychism,  social,  disturbances 
of,  133-144 

Psychology  (biology  and)  of 
the  criminal-born,  282 

Psychosexual  hermaphroditism, 

150.  151 

Psychosis  (reasoning) ,  mor- 
al insanity,  perverts,  166- 
i6g 

Psycho-neurosis,  intellectual 
superiority  as  related  to, 
258-269 

Psychopathic  states,  primary 
(tabular  exhibit),     154-155 

Psychoses  of  degenerates,  161- 
169  —  progressive  syste- 
matized, 155,  156 

Pythian  oracle  of  Delphi,  ref- 
erence to,  182 

Rabaud,  view  of,  on  documen- 
tation, 185 

Rapaport  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibihty,  355   _ 

Raskolnikoff,  hero  in  "Crime 
and  Punishment,"  a  demi- 
fou,  14 

Rauzicr,  view  of,  on  hysteria, 
172 

Reasoning  psychosis,  moral  in- 
sanity, perverts,  166-169  — 
systematized  delusions,  or 
the  "  persecuted ' '  persecu- 
tors, 161-165 

Recamier,  Mme. ,  nervousness 
of,  230,  231 

Regis,  classification  of  obses- 
sions by,  109  —  definition 
of  an  obsession  by,  102  — 
delusions  as  grouped  by, 
no.  III  — description  of 
dreams  by,  11 2-1 14  —  de- 
scription of  an  impulsion  by, 
114  —  distinctions  made  by, 
of  phobias,  107,  108 — exam- 
ple of  litigant  delusion  by, 
165  —  group     of     hysteria 

[41 


disturbances  by,  172  —  im- 
pulsions described  by,    117 

—  on  attenuated  responsi- 
bility, 347,  348  —  on  semi- 
insane  in  drama,  6  —  study 
of  oniric  delirium  by,  53  — 
study  of  Rousseau  by,  206, 
207  —  view  of,  on  poly- 
gonals,  174,  175  — view  of, 
as  to  epileptics,  171 

Regnard,  references  made  to 
works  of,  185 

Responsibility  (and  culpabil- 
ity), physician  and  magis- 
trate, 316,327  —  diminished, 
explained,  36 — medical  idea 
of,  310-327  —  view  of  Ferri 
on,  323  —  views  of  French 
school  on,  320-323  —  views 
of  Italian  School  on,  319,  320 

—  view  of  Saleilles  on,  323, 
324  —  view  of  Tarde  on,  322 

Reveille-Parise,  references 

made  to  works  of,  185 

Religious  ideas,  disturbances 
of,  135,  136 

Ribot,  description  of  aboulias 
by,  122  —  description  of 
panophobia  by ,  i  o  7  —  law  of, 
as  to  aboulias,  122  —  refer- 
ence to,  as  authority  on 
perverts,  168 

Richelieu  as  an  epileptic,   256 

Richepin,  poem  on  the  semi- 
insane  by,  182 

Richer,  Dr.,  Bj 6m son's  refer- 
ence to,  10 

Rights  and  duties  of  society 
toward  the  semi-insane,  270 

."397    , 
Rimbaud,    Arthur,    and    color 

sensations,  227 
Robert,  Henry,  on  attenuated 

responsibility,  338,  339,  361, 

377,  385 
Roger,  Prof.,  characters  of,  in 

"  L'Enquete,"  29 
Romorantin,   Dr.,  view  of,  on 

matrimonial   alliances,    297, 

298 
Rossini    as  semi-insane   (neu- 
rasthenia), 254,  255 

2] 


INDEX 


Roubinovitch  on  attenuated 
responsibility,  343,  344,  361 

—  on    harmfulness    of    the 
semi-insane,  274 

Roudine,  a  demifou  in  Turge- 
nef's  novel,  13 

Rougier  on  attenuated  respon- 
sibility, 349,  377 

Rousseau  as  semi-insane  (neu- 
ropathic, etc.),  204-207  — 
odd  ancestry  of,  204,  205  — 
peculiar  occupations  of,  205 

Rousseau's  letter  to  the  Al- 
mighty, 206 

Roux,  /.,  on  sexual  life  disturb- 
ances, 145 

Rules,  hygienic,  for  nervous 
people,  306-308 

Russia,  insanity  in,  Orchan- 
sky's  view  of,  13 

Russian  novelists,  contempora- 
ry, as  semi-insane,   195-201 

—  views  of  Ossip  Louril  on,  1 3 

Sadism,  definition  of,  149 

Ste.-Beuve,  view  of,  as  to  gen- 
ius, 263 

St.  Julien,  character  in  one  of 
Flaubert's  books,  22,  23 

Saint  Paul  as  an  epileptic,  256 

St.  Pierre,  Bernardinde,  French 
intellectual,  as  semi-insane 
(persecution),  219-221  — 
hallucinations  of,  220,  221 

Saint  Simon  described  by 
Georges  Dumas,  194  — 
views  of,   on  madness,    195 

Saint-Shnon' s  vision  of  Charle- 
magne  194 

"Salammbo,"  by  Flaubert,  de- 
scribed, 23 

Saleilles,  view  of,  concerning 
criminal  and  chronic  acts, 
57,  58  —  view  of,  on  re- 
sponsibility, 323,  324, 327 

Sanity,  problem  of  deciding 
as  to,  38 

Santeuil  as  semi-insane  (con- 
tortions), 223 

Sar  Pcladin  as  semi-insane 
(neuropath),  224 

Saline,  character  of  Gorky,  17 


Satyriasis,  description  of,   147 
Satyriasist,  character  of  a,  145 
Satyriasists      and       nympho- 
maniacs semi-insane  (exam- 
ples), 83,  84 
Saul  as  an  epileptic,  256 
Sauvard     on    attenuated    re- 
sponsibility, 356 
Scarrons,   the,   as   semi-insane 

(demifou),  234 
Schiller  as  an  epileptic,  256  — 

as  semi-insane,  249 
School,  overwork  at  (remedial) , 

302-304 
Schopenhauer    as   semi-insane 
(neuropath),      236,      237  — 
"possest    of    a    devil,"    237 

—  views  of,  on  free-will,  63 
Sc/iMmawn  as  semi-insane  (lype- 

maniac),  250 

Scientific  morality,  Bayet  on, 
65  —  phenomena,  Pierre 
Laffitte  on,  63,  64 

Segalcn,  view  of,  on  Wagner's 
works,  12 

Seglas,  classification  of  relig- 
ious disturbance   ideas,  135 

—  delusions  as  grouped  by, 
no  —  description  of  abou- 
lias  by,  122,  123  —  on  hy- 
pochondria, 126  —  on  ideas 
of  persecution  and  defense 
131  —  on  moral  exhibition- 
ism, 147  —  on  morbid  fam- 
ily relations,  151  — on  op- 
timism, 130  —  view  of,  as 
to  aboulias  of  volition  and 
execution,  122,  123 

Seglas's  classification  of  social 
and  moral  idea  disturbances, 

133-135 
Semi-Insane  according  to  pres- 
ent-day  clinical    neurology, 
97  —  and  the  law,  309-397 

—  crimes    of    the,    280-291 

—  curative  treatment  of, 
291,  292  —  existence  of, 
proved  clinically,  77-179  — 
harmfulness  of  the,  273-280 

—  in  literature  and  on  the 
stage,  3-32  —  lucid,  Tr^lat 
on,         275-280   —    medical 


[4T>] 


INDEX 


study  of,  77-179  —  mis- 
demeanors of  the,  as  free 
men,  275-280  —  poem  by 
Richepin  on  the,  182  — 
prisoners,  view  of  Char- 
pentier  on,  289,  290  — rights 
and  duties  of  society  tow- 
ard the,  270-397  —  Rus- 
sian novelists  as,  195-201  — 
social  value  of  the,  181-269 
symptoms  observed  in,  98, 
99  —  theory  possible,  76  — 
treatment  and  prophylaxis 
of,  291-308 

Semi-insanity  observed  in  dis- 
eases, 152-178 

Senile  dementia,  examples  of, 
in  Ibsen's  works,  8 

Sensations,  cenesthetic,  dis- 
turbances of  some,  128  — 
of  disease  (false)  (hypochon- 
dria), 126 

Sensibility,  general  troubles 
of,  123-128 

Senta,  character  of  Wagner,  a 
victim  of  hallucinations,  12 

" Sentitnental  Education"  by 
Flaubert,  described,  23 

Sergi,  view  of,  on  religion,  135 

Sexual  horror,  concerning,  146 

—  hyperesthesia,  147 — in- 
version, concerning,  150,  151 

—  life,  psychic  acts  of,  dis- 
turbances, 145  —  perver- 
sions, concerning,  147  —  (and 
family)  psychism,  disturb- 
ance of,  144-176 

Shakespeare,  abnormal  char- 
acters of,  5 

Shirai  Ghompatchi,  hero  in 
Japanese  tragedy,  concern- 
ing, 11,12 

Siegfried  of  Wagner,  charac- 
ter of,  12 

Single  "block"  theory  impos- 
sible,  76 — regarding,  50-76 

Smerdiakoff,  epileptic  charac- 
ter of  Dostoiewsky,  16 

Social  and  moral  ideas,  dis- 
turbances of,  133-135  — 
psychism,  disturbances  of, 
133-144  —  value      of      the 

[4 


semi-insane,  181-269 

Society,  rights  and  duties  of,  to- 
ward the  semi-insane, 270-397 

Socrates  and  Pascal  as  semi- 
insane,  186-192  —  as  an  ep- 
ileptic, 256  —  cataleptic  fits 
of,  186,  187  —  faith  in  de- 
mons of,  187 

Sollicr  on  autoscopic  phenom- 
ena, 124-126 

Sonia,  a  character  in  "Crime 
and  Punishment,"  14 

Specular  autoscopy,  descrip- 
tion of,  125 

Spencer,  Herbert,  on  moral 
conduct,  62,  63 

Spendthrifts,  semi-insane  (ex- 
amples), 90 

Stage,  semi-insane  on  the,  3-32 

Stavroguine,  a  degenerate  char- 
acter of  Dostoiewsky,  16 

Study,  medical,  of  semi-insane, 
77-179 

Subconscious  fixt  ideas,  or 
polygonals,  174-176 

Suggestion,  Bernheim's  doc- 
trine of,  60,  71 

Suicides,  great  men,  Lombro- 
so's  list  of,  257  —  semi-in- 
sane (examples),  94,  95 

Superior  degenerates,  concern- 
ing, 156-160 

Surbled,  opinion  of,  on  psychic 
centers,  38 

Svidrigailoff,  a  character  of 
Dostoiewsky  (hallucina- 

tions), 17 

Swedenborg,  hallucinations  of, 
249.  250 

Swift,  Dean,  as  an  epileptic, 
256  —  as  semi-insane,  237,  238 

Symptomatic  or  associated  psy- 
chopathies(tabular),  154, 155 

Systematized  phobias,  division 
of,  by  R^gis,  107,  108 

Tarde,  view  of,  on  responsibil- 
ity, 322 

Tarde' s  claim  that  Lombroso 
is  inconsistent,  286-288 

Tardieu,  view  of,  as  to  genius, 
263 

14] 


INDEX 


Tasso  as  semi-insane  (lype- 
maniac),  234,  235 

Tchekkof,  semi-insane  charac- 
ters in  books  by,  17  —  quo- 
tation from,  183 

Tennyson's  "Maud,"  charac- 
ter of,  1 2 

Theater,  Japanese,  study  of 
plays,  by  Geyer,  n 

Theory,  "  single-block,"  regard- 
ing, 50-76  —  "two-block," 
regarding,  34-50  —  unmedi- 
cal,  the,  34-50 

Timidity,  morbid,  description 
of,  129 

Tissot,  view  of,  on  Bjornson's 
play,  10 

Tolstoy  as  semi-insane,  198- 
201 

Tolstoy's  semi-insane  charac- 
ters in  his  works,  18  —  air- 
flying  experiment,  198  — 
odd  love  affairs,  199 

Tours,  De,  concerning  refer- 
ences made  to  works  of,  184 

Trelat  on  attenuated  responsi- 
bility, 375 — on  the  lucid 
semi-insane,  275-280  — 
view  of,  on  matrimonial  al- 
liances, 295,  296 

Trelat' s  interpretation  of  rea- 
soning insanity,  15  —  work 
on  the  semi-insane,  79,  80 

Trochine,  view  of,  concerning 
Gogol,  196 

Troubles  of  general  sensibility, 
123-128 

Tschisch  on  Raskolnikoff's 
malady,  15 

Turgenef,  a  critic  of  Don  Quix- 
ote, 13 — a  critic  of  Ha:nlet,  I  ^ 

"Two-Block"  theory,  regard- 
ing, 34-50 — theory  impos- 
sible, 76  —  theory  untena- 
ble, 50 

Unbalanced,    the,    concerning, 

157.  158 
Unmcdical  theory,  the,  34-50 

Vallon,  Charles,  on  attenuated 
responsibility,    346,  347 

[4 


Value,  social,  of  the  semi-in- 
sane, 181-269 

Van  Helmont  as  semi-insane 
(hallucinations),  249 

Verlaine  as  semi-insane  (demi- 
fou),  234 

Villemain,  French  intellectual, 
as  semi-insane  (persecution), 
203,  204  —  hallucinations  of, 
203,  204 

Villons,  the,  as  semi-insane 
(demifou),  234 

Voltaire  as  seini -insane  (neu- 
rasthenic and  hypochondri- 
acal), 222 

Vo7t  Hammel  on  attenuated 
responsibility,  364 

Von  Listz,  on  attenuated  re- 
sponsibility, 346,  364,  369 

Wagner  as  an  epileptic,  256  — 
as  semi-insane  (decadent), 
251.  252 

Wagner's  work,  Segalen's 
view  of,  12 

Watt,  James,  as  semi-insane 
(hypochondria),  247 

Weber  as  semi-insane,  249  — 
views  of,  on  the  moral  law, 
64 

Wechniakoff,  references  made 
to  works  of,  185  —  view  of, 
as  to  genius,  262,  263 

Werther,  suicidal  obsession  of,  6 

Westphal,  definition  of  an  ob- 
session by,  102 

Wilberforce,  William,  as  semi- 
insane  (opium),  244 

"Wild  Duck"  the,  of  Ibsen,  an 
index  of  that  author's  mind. 


Zinmiermann  as  insane  (hal- 
lucinations), 247 

Zola  as  a  counter  of  gas-jets 
and  door-numbers,  225  —  as 
a  semi-insane  (olf  active), 
224-226  —  semi -insane  char- 
acters of,  245 

Zola's  absent-dinner  diagnosis, 
225  —  good  and  bad  omens. 
225,   226 

X5] 


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